Spirit and Dust
How do you make sense of death? One minute they are here, living, talking and breathing, the next moment they are not. “Death,” said Emily Dickinson “is a dialogue between the spirit and the dust.” This series, created in the wake of my mother in law death, is an attempt raise above the dust and listen to the spirit. Create a bigger reality, where life and death are not entirely black and white.
Through the lens, I look for symbols of the eternal and the impermanent: light forms, a peeling piece of bark, the fluttering wing of a butterfly. Using a process that straddles the digital and analog worlds, fragments of reality captured on black and white film are composited into new digital images. Under the dim lights of the darkroom, virtual pixels morph into unique Lith prints. Dark, grainy browns and delicate cream shades, blur the boundaries between black and white.
Death is a dialogue between the spirit and the dust.
“Dissolve,” says Death. The Spirit, “Sir, I have another trust.”
Death doubts it, argues from the ground. The Spirit turns away,
Just laying off, for evidence, an overcoat of clay.
"Time and Eternity" by Emily Dickinson
