Graves on Grass
The Real & The Ideal
Works from the series “Graves on Grass” (2016-2017), based in Cape Ann, began with a conversation about Miguel de
Cervantes Saavedra’s Don Quixote and chasing windmills. I became interested in the “Three Sisters” wind turbines on Cape
Ann, MA and the relationship they have to their Idyllic Island home. In a twist of the narrative these turbines, rather than
becoming mythological giants, pull us back from idealized representation and force us to see Cape Ann from a contemporary
viewpoint. Sprawling suburbia and recreation, that play a delicate symphony with conservation, have now brought daily living
and the trampling foot of the tourist to places of refuge. I hope to pull back the canvass and to look at these sites as a complex
topography that struggles to find balance between the progress that makes contemporary life possible, and the holding onto
old ideals that enable people feel connected to place. By taking advantage of photography’s claim to realism, and by pushing
the camera beyond the detail-oriented paradigm of straight photography, I seek to imbibe both the form and content of these
images with tension between the real and ideal - to show them pushing up against each other; contending for our imagination.
