Living With Entropy: Series 1 - Color Work

The color photographs in this series are drawn from a larger ongoing project, “Living with Entropy.” I began this project in 2008, after a photographer I know suggested that since I was now working with a digital camera I should try making some color photographs. I found the idea intriguing, and decided that I would make an initial attempt during my next trip to Mt. Desert Island, on the Maine coast. Just prior to making that trip I read Alan Weisman’s “The World Without Us.” His book describes how, in the absence of continual maintenance, all of humankind’s manufactured goods, buildings, and infrastructure would succumb to nature’s relentless destructive forces, marching inexorably toward increasing degradation and, ultimately, disintegration. The process exemplifies the material aspect of what we now call entropy, the tendency of all systems, natural or manmade, to devolve toward increasing disorder and chaos. These ideas were still fresh in my mind when I arrived at Mt. Desert Island and began searching for subjects for my anticipated color work. I paid a visit to a local antique/junk seller, Super’s Junkin’ Company, in the Town Hill section of Bar Harbor. The owner, Michael “Super” Ross, generously invited me to explore and photograph the entire site, containing a superabundance of visually fascinating material, much of it kept outdoors year-round, exposed to the elements, exposed to entropic forces. I have returned to photograph at “Super’s” every year since my first visit in 2008. When photographing at this and other sites, my aim is not to illustrate entropy per se. Rather, I am interested in the variety of feelings, emotions, and meanings engendered by these objects as they deteriorate and are consumed by their environment. They speak to the transience of life and carry intimations of mortality. These ideas are always lurking in the back of my mind as I am working, influencing the kinds of things I notice, and then explore, and then photograph.