Thanks for clicking on my About page. I've been updating it every few days. So if you're interested in my work, it's a good place to start. I begin with some thoughts on my Good Neighbours series, since it's the most recent thread of a longer term project I've been working on called Wild Suburb.
Good Neighbours
Good Neighbours is based upon trust. Any time we raise a camera to our eye and aim it at another person, there is trust. The trust a photographer has with their subject is similar to other forms of trust we place in one another, taking time to develop and nurture, and based upon shared attitudes and beliefs, which foster a sense of belonging. In society, trust is the glue that binds us. Without it, we break apart.
Wherever there is trust, there is also the possibility of deception. The two cannot exist independently. Good Neighbours stylizes this tension, not in a literal way, but in a playful, satirical way. Obviously, my subjects know it's me behind the mask. By donning it for a staged, performance ritual, I dramatize it.
In my art practice, as in my life, trust is powerful. With my wife, daughter, dog, friends, family, colleagues, and neighbours, Like love, it's a privilege to have, one of life's most precious gifts. It drives so much of my work. And because of this, I would never betray it.
I have a complex history with deer, having both photographed, and hunted them. In 1994 I shot a buck on my first and only hunting trip. I skinned and ate the animal, but to this day regret the killing. Wild Suburb is in part a recognition of this act. By adopting the deer man alter ego, I hope to foster a sense of atonement.
Bi-coastal, Judeo-Christian, dual citizen, are all terms I've used to describe myself. I was born in New York City, and moved to Los Angeles when I was 11. I was raised in a Jewish family, and married a Protestant (although we're both agnostic). And I spent the first half of my life living in the Unites States, and now I'm living the second half in Canada.
I'm an associate professor and director of the School of Communication Design at the Alberta University of the Arts in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I have an MFA in Photography from Penn State University and a BA in Visual Art from the University of Maryland. My research explores themes of identity, acceptance and belonging in society and nature. See my work on Instagram @wildsuburb.
Wild Suburb
Wild Suburb is about fitting in. It explores themes of identity, acceptance and belonging in society, and in the past ten years, has evolved to incorporate the natural landscape. Since becoming a dual citizen of Canada and the US, I’ve developed a particular interest in fitting in, from a dual citizen’s perspective. My current work explores this themesin southern Alberta; where prairie grasses meet cul-de-sacs, and the mighty Bow River flows past suburban strip malls. It's a liminal space where culture meets ecology, here on the edge of the Canadian Wild.
Wild Suburb is inspired by my life in Western Canada, in a suburb of Calgary, Alberta. Its unique mix of culture and ecology stood out to me almost immediately when I arrived here twenty years ago, and still fascinates me today, since developing a sense of acceptance belonging within this culture and landscape.
I'm thankful to Canada, and the people of the Blackfoot Confederacy, including the Siksika, Kainai, Piikani, Tsuut’ina, îethka Nakoda, Chiniki, Bearspaw, and Goodstoney Nations, for accepting me . As an immigrant, father, husband, artist, teacher, and runner, I'm grateful to call this place home. I cite running because it's a daily ritual that binds me, within my suburb, to nature.
On my daily route I pass familiar sites, houses, bus stops, shops, a community centre, an elementary school. Then I drop down a hill and through a tunnel that places me in a vast public park with miles of creeks, bike paths, old growth trees, two baseball fields, a golf course, and a cemetery. I'm barely ten minutes from downtown Calgary, a city of two million perople, but I'm running on the edge of the Canadian Wild.
I pass other runners, cyclists, golfers, and cross-country skiers. Jackrabbits, skunks, badgers, and coyotes. Birders twice a year, with cameras and binoculars, looking at warblers and redstarts, and snowy owls. If someone points out an interesting creature I always smile and say, “…it’s a wild suburb.”
Over the years, prairie grasses and azure blue skies crept into my work. One day, an animal made an appearance. And eventually, something wild. I was thinkings about some of this at a time when I was invited to give a talk at a conference in Lake Louise, Alberta. It was then that I decided to make my first animal mask and do a performance. I chose the deer as an alter ego that would be welcomed, not feared, but also, understood as wild.
At the end of my talk I revealed the mask, walked down to the water's edge, put it on and began making photographs; selfies, nature shots, and pictures of tourists, who in turn asked if I’d pose for photographs with them. From the conference room window facing the lake, my colleagues watched the scene unfold.
The opportunity to perform at the lake and Victoria Glacier, powerful symbols of untamed nature in Canada, is what galvanized my thinking; the irony and absurdity of placing a camera in the hands of wildlife here. The experience motivated me to go further, as I began staging photographs closer to home in my own neighbourhood as a deer man, knocking on doors, asking for permission to stand in a neighbour’s yard or garden, which would invariably lead to questions or laughter that only fueled the performance ritual.
On July 4, 2023 I published my first performance on Instagram @wildsuburb. The logistics, planning, and conversations that followed were unique compared with other investigations I’ve conducted, as the mask became a vehicle for creative inquiry.
The use of masks in ritual performance is as old as culture itself, present in some form in virtually every civilization. Early masks have been found in North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. A common explanation for ancient masking rituals ties them to spiritual belief. That by masking, someone can channel or embody an ancestral spirit, and become possessed by it.
Covering the face allows the spirit to enter, transforming the person with ancestral power, belief in the power makes the transformation complete, and there is a corresponding loss of inhibition. Things one might not normally do they suddenly have the power to do, and the feeling may heighten to a trance-like state, allowing for deeper, mystical insights into the nature of being (1).
In Mask and Masking: A Survey of their Universal Application to Theatre Practice, 1984, Inih Ebong writes, “Masks are profound universal statements on the metaphysical paradox of being and existence.” Later, he quotes the anthropologist Elizabeth Tonkin, “…at its most fundamental, the act of masking is an embodied paradox: the wearer has a face and a not-face (2).”
A device that reveals by concealing? Allowing a person to be themself and not themself, simultaneously? These are alluring paradoxes.
Jackalope
The jackalope is a mythical creature of North American folklore described as a jackrabbit with antelope horns. The earliest documented case of a taxidermy jackalope dates back to 1932, when two amateur taxidermists in South Dakota made a hoax mount, sold it to a local hotel bar, and it became a local oddity. Soon after, a local drugstore began selling faux mounts commercially, and so began the modern legend of the jackalope.
In the century that followed the jackalope became a staple of western kitsch and Americana found in bars, greasy spoons and roadside attractions across the American West. According to jacka-lore, jackalope mate only during a lightning storm, their milk is a powerful aphrodisiac (although they’re notoriously difficult to milk) and it’s the only animal that can throw its voice. They say if you’re out camping and you sit by the fire and sing, the voice of the jackalope will harmonize with you (3).
In an American west that has been objectified, commodified and parodied, the jackalope is a fitting symbol of folk humour. But the mythology dates back much further. There are ancient drawings of horned rabbits from Europe, Africa and Asia, and one described in an early Buddhist text (4).
Chimera
History is replete with stories of hybrid creatures known as chimera. The original chimera is from Greek mythology, and had a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail. Today the word commonly refers to any hybrid creature made up of different animal parts—a horse with wings, cats with eagle heads or fish with fur.
Erving Goffman
The influential Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman blurred the line between performance and reality by suggesting that everyday social interactions are akin to theatrical performances occurring on a main stage and a back stage. On the main stage, individuals reveal what they want others to see about them, while on the back stage, they keep other parts of themselves hidden. Goffman essentially proposed a theory of self where individuals, motivated primarily by the desire to avoid embarrassment, strive to control impressions others form about them (5).
More
As I push into the next phase of my work I want to more fully integrate my human features with my animal features, forcing viewers to reconcile their perceptions of me. As a deer-man, I am hungry, seeking shelter, and territorial. As a human, I am a bi-coastal, Judeo-Christian, dual citizen.
Small Town
While launching Good Neighbours, I played around with a sidebar series called Small Town. In the series, I collaborating with a good friend and neighbour who’s been building an elaborate train set in his basement for twenty years. For the project I made a miniature deer man from leftover toy parts, and went on a journey investigating his tiny town. It was an opportunity to explore similar themes to those in my other work, but in a micro environment. No artificial intelligence was used in the creation of this work.
References
1. Dr. Gwilym Morus-Baird, Celtic Source: Exploring the Myths of the Celtic Nation, Celtic Source Online, 2024
2. Inih A. Ebong, Mask and Masking: A Survey of their Universal Application to Theatre Practice, Nomos, 1984
3. Michael P. Branch, On the Trail of the Jackalope, Pegasus Books, 2022
4. Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Imaginary Beings, Penguin Press, 2006
5. Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Doubleday, 1956
Further Reading:
John Berger, Ways of Seeing
Walter Benjamin, Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida
Susan Sontag, On Photography
Martha Rosler, On Documentary Photography
Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Inside/Out
Clive Scott, The Spoken Image
Andy Grundberg, Crisis of the Real
Bertrand Russell, Appearance and Reality