Noir

This series of photo-based work represents a synthesis of my love of film noir and of Georges Seurat's black conté crayon drawings, done by him in the mid-1880's. Seurat's drawings are blurry, dark, and mysterious and very photographic in the sense that they contain almost no visible contour lines; shapes are defined entirely by changes in tone. I created my series from images that I appropriated from old photos, TV shows, movies, and photos by and of myself. I made myself the protagonist in many of the images. I sometimes donned disguises to thwart and confuse my many enemies. I developed a procedure in Photoshop to mimic the look of Seurat's drawings, down to the type of textured, laid paper that he used. As a final homage, I draw on the prints with black conté crayon. The images are grouped into five general categories: femme fatale, lonely figure, victim, voyeur, and "me" (images in which I appear as the protagonist). When displaying the series, I select and arrange the images randomly, so that each viewer may construct his or her own imaginary narrative.