mise en scenes

I couldn't sleep last night, something was scratching its way through the bedroom wall. I opened a window to investigate and through the darkness I saw a small black cat staring back at me. I could see it had white feet as if it were wearing boots. After a brief acknowledgement it remained undeterred by my presence, it appeared to be preoccupied, or on a particular mission.

Mise en scènes (1998-2010)

 

My first body of work during graduate school and for some time thereafter comprised of photo-based artworks that explores cinematic and open-ended meaning, concepts associated with reader response theory, such as "death of the author"  These were key influences and areas I was interested in exploring. I was thinking in a Surrealist mode and borrowing cues from Godard, Lynch, Hitchcockian blondes and Sirkian melodramas among others, providing points of reference. I was interested in the "mise en scene" as consisting of not only setting but the hour of day, day of the week, and/or time year which is unavoidable in cinema as well as still photography, so exploiting these relationships to narrative made sense to me. Ambiguity also plays an inherent role in provoking contemplation, similarly to a double-entendre, or an elliptical effect.

"Morning is the most dangerous time of day when we are most aware, possessing a higher level of consciousness of reality, and when we awaken to contemplate who and why we are"  - Franz.Kafka

 

  

 

 

 

  

 

  

 

 

   

 

                                

 

 

  

 

  

 

                         

        

     

The images in this series/body of work were shot in the studio or on location. Other images are appropriated from AP newswire image database a key source I had access to at the time while working at a newspaper during the late 90's and early 2000's  Text description was written by the artist.