Back Alley

Usually when I think of photographs I think of them as somehow singular and self contained.  Photos in a photo album (digital or otherwise) present themselves discretely,even if they share a similar subject matter: they’re intentionally grouped not intentionally relational.  The exceptions that come to mind are Bernd and Hilla Becher, David Hockney’s cubist photos and the work of Duane Michals.  I’m sure there are others.

I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing when I group photos, in that I haven’t thought about it prior to, or at the time of shooting, but only afterwards when two and sometimes three images strike me as somehow working together.  The three photos from the Thai restaurant work better together in that they give a clearer sense of what’s happening – also spatially they become more interesting.  The missing cat triptych was created from photos taken in Halifax last summer.  The image of the cat in the poster has been rendered indiscernible by water damage.  The black cat happened to be crossing the street at the same time as me.  The woman praying was from a billboard advertisement for MicMac mall.  There were a series of them up throughout the city with a pseudoreligious, or perhaps religiously capitalist, theme. The two photos from the alley work together by creating a stronger sense of dimensionality.