The Lost Films1995

They are travelogues in photographic fact and in the mind. Unable to afford printing them, I had stuck them in a drawer. The first was made in 1991, the second through sixth in 1992, seven and eight in '93, and the ninth in '92. 1) A travelogue "nocturne" on the city of London as illuminated by "glaze" finally off the surfaces of Turner's paintings. 2) A travelogue to the north of Finland shepherded by the midnight sun. 3) A hand-painted work, a "midsummer's night dream," still reflective of the experience of the previous summer in Finland. 4) A multiply pastel toned balloon of optical fog triumphing over the barest hints of photographic representation in the lower right hand corner. 5) A mountain meditation primarily in blue "mountains" of the mind shaped by amorphous dull yellows and faded violets. 6) A hand-painted film – some of the same colors of the previous films moving through the sandbars and oceans of thoughtful recollection. 7) This is the eternally ephemeral process of attempts to remember imagery "giving way"/being-displaced-by the contemporaneously practical sighting of what confronts any given viewer at every shift of open eyes (or, as in the film, at every shift of camera, optical focus and montage of edit) – the skeins of The Atlantic, the particularities of Boston night lights, and illuminated points West ending on a garbage truck in a parking lot by the deserts of New Mexico. 8) A dark "sea chante" of absolute photography. 9) The color negative of "truth" – that is to say it is the whole truth (insofar as hand-painted film might aspire to achieve it) and a counterbalance epiphany to any such "truth" as might be put in quotes.