STOMP

Published by Rim books, and exhibited as an installation, this collection of photographs i began in 2014 as a personal response to the destruction of cultural identity and history seen from Bamiyan to Timbuktu, Palmyra to Aleppo. Gathering images for STOMP from Europe, India and Egypt was a form of grieving for our own time by meditating on these portraits from the past. The title STOMP is based on a quote from 1984 by George Orwell, which describes a vision of fascism. That vision echoes today, and traces its roots through the Holocaust and Armenian genocide, much further back in human consciousness. There is a long history of attempting to erase people from memory. But the process of contemplating these images may have its own effect, helping engage a shared sense of humanity and allowing a shift in perspective. The quote from Rumi is a reminder of hope; that we can step beyond despair in the face of destruction.The violence of human action seen in the context of eternity is an acceleration of time, speeding the disappearance that time brings. In this light, overcoming the differences of individual stories the portraits connect and become the same: pictures of every man and every woman, from every time, and every place; pictures of us. “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever.” George Orwell 1984 “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other' doesn't make any sense.” Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi - 13th century