SHADOWS OF TIME
Shadows of Time is an investigation into the relationship between Romanticism and modern thought. Our vernacular view of the modern incorporates elements of the Romantic, especially the Romantic view of landscape, into contemporary culture. We have a view of nature that is formed by the Romantic movement. Central to this is a view of the natural as symbol of lost age, something we at with a nostalgia, but a nostalgia a longing for a past that never existed. We look at nature through the ancient Greek idea of the lost Golden Age. This is manifested in the country home, be it a palatial estate or a renovated farm, what we are looking for is an idyll that represents Eden, a place that we want to inhabit, while knowing it is closed to us. This longing to create our own personal Eden is our desire to find an eternal paradise as the embodiment of salvation.
The images in the series combine images from urban settings, mainly New York, Boston & Hoboken, NJ with image from the Swiss Alps. Most of the Alpine images are taken around Mt. Rigi. Rigi was the first Swiss mountain to have a rail road to its summit, it was visited by Mark Twain and Queen Victoria. It was a popular stop on what was called the Grand Tour form Italy through the Alps. Both the stills and videos combine images from the Alps with the contemporary urban images. In most cases the Romantic images are presented as half remember echoes of past times reappearing through the shadows of the urban images. In the video works the urban image will briefly be over taken by the Alpine image only to return back into memory. There is a second group of videos in this project which are installation based videos. In these works the shadows from objects of contemporary urban life are project into the exhibition space with Alpine videos inside the shadow.
