Ritual and Ruin

These photomontages depict an arcane netherworld set somewhere in the mid19th century American South. Created in the realm of historical fiction, they weave together the disparate, war-ravaged lives of soldiers, civilians, slaves, women, children, and animals with the iconography of the South. These characters, suspended in their bizarre afterlives, remain disconnected from the particulars of history. In creating these montages I combine selected elements from historical images with my own photography. Each piece contains approximately one hundred layers which are digitally sized, blended and collaged into a single, large scale image. The inhabitants of this mysterious world, in ritual and in ruin, gather to celebrate, glorify, perform, exalt and mourn while holding onto hope for their own resurrection and escape. Created from three centuries of photography, this work explores a region that remains, in part, unwontedly bound to yesterday - a place whose present is as peculiar and as haunted as its past.