The Certainty of Nothing
STATEMENT
We cannot fully understand the concept of the monumental until we witness the goals of centuries-old civilizations and the ways in which time and nature transformed them. I experienced both on my visit to the ruins of the Cambodian cities of Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat, which I photographed extensively, and which form the essence of this series, The Certainty of Nothing.
For centuries these ancient cities were reclaimed by the jungle before being returned to light. Hindu legend has it that the Gods and Demons worked together for a millennium, using a serpent as a rope, to churn the Ocean of Milk and release the nectar of life—emitting a terrible toxin in the process. The monumental figures - Gods and Demons - which flank the entrance to Angkor Thom and which were carved almost a thousand years ago, speak to that narrative. As the story goes on to teach us, when a great power, the “elixir,” is unleashed from the world, unexpected consequences can come in its wake.
Are we ever prepared to comprehend the potential ramifications and receptions of what we make and leave behind? Global warming, rampant wildfires and deforestation, and widespread greed suggest not. I don’t share the culture or the religion underpinning the myths of Angkor Thom, but I share without question, their sense of the apocalyptic, the enormity of the cosmos. It is back in my studio that I begin to make sense of it all, because for me, photography is not just a method of recording the world, but a tool for examining and revealing its mysteries.
I have always sought to tease out from photographs what the lens cannot show. This series is no exception. I continue to use elements both natural and man-made; the formal elements of light and line and hand-wrought interventions – tearing, folding, puncturing, layering and drawing. My palette goes to extremes – deep dark and unknown to bleached pastel and ephemeral. In the past, the man-made architecture I incorporated in my work spanned only recent decades; here, the structures go back almost a millennium. The stories, hopes, and dreams embedded in them, however, go back even longer. These are rocks that speak to the origins of all rocks, stones that somehow explain “stone.” They are proof of how civilizations came into being. Then, as now, there was certainty in nothing. But still, they persisted.
And here I am, visiting them after the centuries have pitted and bleached and toned and eroded their surfaces. In The Certainty of Nothing, rather than simply recording the intersections of man and nature as I usually do, I incorporate my contemporary response to these timeless monuments – I make my mark on their mark, adding another layer of time to the image. I want to “vent” or otherwise open a small gaze, portal, or alternate reading of these hard-to-descry ancient marks; layering and conflating them creates a new phenomenal and perceptual “play.”
A group of eighteen images in the series reference the same ancient stone wall but differ in tone and linear elements. The number nine is revered in Hindu culture as the end of the decimal system and numerically, the multiplication of nine with other digits is self-referential. To gently augment the stone wall’s lines (and in the process engage the eye) I use a sharp sculptor’s tool to follow the shapes etched ages ago by a once known stone artist. Punctuating the surface of the image with tiny pricks, I create a line of white dots which aerate the surface and allow light to infiltrate. In doing so, I invite the viewer to look beyond the original surfaces and bring attention to the ancients’ marks alongside my own. Today one might think of my lines as scarification, or tattoos, or perhaps of a traveler marking her itinerary through the ancient site. There is a slight wobble to the original marks as there is to mine, uniting us as human artisans from different times, cultures and systems of belief.
I used to see a vast world in corner lots and cracked surfaces, buildings and walls in my familiar corner of the universe. Now, having traveled around the globe, I feel the planet getting smaller.
Time has passed. Much has changed. Yet we don’t know what our future holds any more than the ancients did. I worry about the time in which I am living. I hope to communicate some small message, leaving a mark that will allow light to penetrate.
