Singles #5
There is mystery in this photograph, a slight suggestion of something frightening lurking in the distance, perhaps even an echo from an as-yet-unwritten future. That is my personal reading of the image now, when I try to look at it with some detachment; the reality of the moment, the photographed moment, was very different: just a quiet evening, a still body of water, and some very, very flat light. And others may see other things entirely. I think what I saw at the time was the emptiness across the water and the isolation of the building — nothing more. I’d been looking a lot that day for scenes that were somehow lacking something, scenes that possessed, as paradoxical as it might sound, an absence. I made around five or six exposures as I stood there on the dam, each one essentially the same, but for slight shifts (a little to the left, a little to the right) in the placement of the structure: hunting for some sort of balance. When I came to process (digitally process — things would be different in a darkroom) the photograph I probably did too much work, made too many adjustments; but there was something in there that I wanted to pull out and highlight, and regardless of whether or not I was successful, I needed to try.
Hanzhong, 2008.