A lot of what you will find here is landscape and nature photography. You will also find moody images of interiors and exteriors from my home, hotels, and the homes of my friends and family. As well as portraits and posts of occasional studio work. I am not the kind of artist who believes that I have some great message to pass on to my viewers, but rather that my viewers bear the message by way of what they find in my work.
I also enjoy conceptual photography and am currently working on developing a more comprehensive body of conceptual work.
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An outtake from my “crime scene” shoot featuring Shannon. She looks pretty even covered in blood.
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“Crime Scene 4”
I am finally getting back to work on my Crimes Scenes series which was inspired by Luc Sante’s book “Evidence.” I found that my initial photos did not have the proper aesthetic. Part of this was because I needed a wide angle lens to get the odd distorted appearance which adds a sort of ominous mystery to the photos in the book. At first I wanted to recreate the crime scenes in color and give them a more modern feel, but I have decided instead to stick more closely to the aesthetic found in the book, which means the photos will all be black and white and will use direct flash. I am very pleased with the result in this particular photograph. I think it conveys the combination of mystery, awe, and total ordinariness found in the real crime scene photos from the book. Here is a link to an earlier photo which was supposed to be a part of the series, but will now be an outtake: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nataliearriola/6296979198/in/photostream. I think it is clear that this new edit is far superior.
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No Caption 1
This is the first of a series I am starting. It is inspired by a book I recently found while visiting Powell’s Books in Portland, Or. The book is called “Evidence” by Luc Sante. It is a collection of crime scene photos taken by the NYPD from 1914 to 1918. I was intrigued by these photographs. Most of the photos are in no way attached to any explanation of the scenes they capture. The victims lie anonymous in their final postures. Sante discusses the fact that they are mostly ordinary people who lived their lives under the public radar. The capturing of each victim in these photographs after their death becomes a sort of revelation of ordinary existence, the irony of course being that that existence has been caught only upon its extinction. The final expressions and poses, the rooms and alley ways, the bar room floors and junk yards where we find these people fascinates me and I have set out to create my own crime scenes in hopes of conveying something of the mystery of death, it’s suddenness, and it’s ordinariness. Our fear of death hyperbolizes it into a monster or fiend, but in reality it is the most ordinary of things, just as ordinary as the lives of those it takes.
