For those interested in following my Book Passage Series, please have patience. I finally found a key prop I need for my next photograph. With the holiday fast approaching and a group show to get ready for I will have the new image in about another 10 ten days. Until then I am posting images from the past. Hope you enjoy!
These two images are titled Charity and Charity's Addiction. Both photographs are based on a woman named Charity who was a friend of a friend. My friend took me to Charity's house because she had an awesome doll collection. She also had a serious heroine addiction. When we went to Charity's house she was very skeptical of me and really didn't want me in her house but because I was a friend of one of her good friends she allowed me in. She proceeded to show me all her dolls, most altered with paint and wardrobe. The first image on the left was actually taken with an SX-70 Polaroid camera of a shrine like set-up Charity had in one of her closets. I then manipulated the scanned polaroid in Photoshop.
Soon after I visited Charity's house she traveled to Nebraska to visit and get clean at a family members house. A few months later when I was having dinner with my friend she said, "You remember Charity"?, and of course I did. That house, her behavior, and her belongings are not something you soon forget. Well, Charity got clean but as soon as she came back and was with "friends" in Chicago she quickly went back to her old ways and unfortunately O.D.! So the image on the right was made after hearing the news of Charity's death. This turned out to be the second time in my life at that time where someone I hardly knew who passes away ends up having a huge impact on you emotionally. I find these images beautiful and honest in a very haunting way.
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3 comments:
I like! Very sad story behind these though. I sensed it in
the feel of the work, then read the background story.
Nice work.
Crap, Bill, that sucks. How crazy is it that you got to take those photos first though. I love what you did with the first one especially. But that second one gets to me somehow. So both were hers?
No. The first doll was Charity's and I photographed it in her closet as I found it. The second photo was from a doll that I bought at a flea market but it came in that box. When I found out that she died I was drawn to illustrate her story through this doll. It seemed so perfect. By the time I was introduced to her she was so paranoid about people not in her circle of friends that she wouldn't let me take the dolls to be photographed. I could only photograph them at her house. A sad true story that unfortunately happens all too often, even in the suburbs.
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