In Front of the Sky 1987 -1989

In Front of the Sky 1987-1989
In early 1987, I was ready for a change in my work. I sort of knew where I wanted to go next. I wanted to leave the approach to photography that was site and subject specific. I wanted to wander again and respond to my intuition.

I still wanted to explore color as a component of the work but make it less of a form of eye candy. So I started cross processing high speed film, to give the new work some of the grittiness I admired in the work of Bill Brandt and 1950s street photography.

In the early gestational days of this project I applied for a Creative Artist Fellowship from the Michigan Council for the Arts. They wanted a proposal of for what I would do with the grant. This project was so early in its formation that that I did not fully know how to explain my goals. So I did my best to describe something that was instinctual in words. I proposed a project entitled In Front of the Sky, thinking that was vague enough to cover whatever the project evolved into.

I was awarded the grant. I continued to follow my intuition in an era dominated by documentation, formal conceptual frameworks, and compartmentalization. I instead rambled about, and then responded.