Polamaps
What started as a faint memory of a science experiment I saw on a children's TV show when I was 9 years old, turned out to be a multi year project. These are digital photographs of 2 analog things: plastic and water - photographed with polarized light from above. Because it takes a lot longer to find/create an image, the act of photographing is more meditative and playful. No digital manipulation was used aside from basic color and contrast adjustments.
When I was a kid my dad and I watched a television show called Mr. Wizard. The weekly show starring Don Herbert as Mr. Wizard ran from the 60's through the 80's, entertaining and educating kids with science.
One experiment which utilized polarized light and a thin sheets of plastic, always stayed with me. So in 2010 I duplicated the experiment and photographed the results. I tried many different kinds of plastics as well as stressing, folding and burning the plastic in an effort to manipulate texture. It was so much fun that I kept working on the series until 2016 - eventually ending up with these 33 images.
This work is also about what I saw when I was a little boy, staring out the window of the 1967 Mooney Executive airplane my dad owned with 4 other guys. We often used it for trips to see family around the Midwest.
Those trips were fun but they were also three to six hours long and I can remember logging a lot of time looking down at the unique patterns on the land below, both man-made and natural.
I was fascinated with aviation mostly because I wanted to be like my dad, but I was even more interested in the landscape below, slowing passing by and constantly changing and fascinating me.
These are digital photographs of stressed and folded Mylar plastic and water. Aside from slight color correction, I applied very little image enhancement.
The 34 images in this series were made between 2010 and 2017
Giclee prints mounted to Dibond aluminum with 1/4" Plexiglass front - Edition of 5
*Please contact the studio for pricing and edition information.
