SALTED AWAY

 "Salted Away:" to preserve, save for later and, implicitly, to ensure that a necessary thing will be available when needed. 

ROCKS AND BALLOONS? Our collaborative discussions focused on questions of the meaning of knowledge (epistemology), the writings of Thomas Pynchon and Soren Kierkegaard, and alternative photographic processes, including emulsion lifts. It became obvious, as we talked, that what at first seemed certain and knowable to the one – whether "art" or photography, or their meaning, or purpose – was in fact often uncertain and maybe even unknowable to the other. The same conflict manifests itself when the concept of "uncertainty" was carefully examined. It seemed natural, then, to represent this paradoxical inversion of the certain and uncertain graphically by placing our most "certain" ideas, originally intended for the rocks, on the most ephemeral objects we could imagine, in this case helium filled balloons, and vice versa. Polaroid emulsion lifts, the use of rocks and balloons, and installation, rather than traditional means of viewing images, seemed like a perfectly natural and necessary ways for us represent or at least question the uncertainty of certainty. 

WHY? 
Our project arose out of our desire to collaborate as photographers, to learn from each other, and to make something new. The process of collaboration was as important to us as the resulting project. However, we soon discovered that we have significant and undeniable differences in experience, perspective and approach. Rather than allow these differences to defeat the collaboration, however, we dug deeper. It helps to know that Kristy is formally trained, holding an MFA in photography, but that she also has a formal background in mathematics and computer science. That training, while subservient to her photography, undoubtedly influences her methodology in resolving photographic problems and influences her subconscious interest in photographically exploring "certainties" and “uncertainties.”  For David, whose family business has always been photography, photography has never represented "certainty," but the joy of uncertainty and flexibility. The dichotomy in approach to photographic meaning is one we both find worth exploring. 

We do not pretend that resolution of certainties and uncertainties is ultimately possible through this collaboration, but our effort represents a dialogue more than anything and, as a dialogue, it appears that the inversions are most telling.