Rocks and Clouds
Rocks and Clouds explores the significance of time through ancient rocks and fleeting clouds. As with New York Arbor, these large-format black and white pictures were made in the five boroughs of New York City and investigate how nature and society interact. They focus on how the natural world exists in an urban landscape--where architecture is, at its most elemental, made of rock. The mirroring of rocks and clouds and the synthesis of what’s above and below the horizon have intrigued ancient Chinese painters, as well as modern earthwork artists such as Robert Smithson, both of whom were inspirations for this series. Made with an 8x10 field camera, Rocks and Clouds salutes slow photography in a digital culture. In this way, the subject of time informs the work’s content and its methodology. These pictures evoke the human aspiration--and inability--to harness time and nature, and further refine the convergence of the conceptual and documentary.