REJECTED BEAUTY / Indirect Portraiture, Part Two

The "Whose" is Not an Issue

The “Whose” is not an Issue

When I capture the image of a snarled garden hose or a soap suds filled kitchen sink or a random discarded mattress by the side of the road, I am simply recording an unexpected vision, an odd surprise of what otherwise is passed by and not worthy of documentation. These things are so ordinary as to be invisible. I record them anyway. Sometimes they are gorgeously exquisite and worthy of more than a glance. One might see these objects as visual poetry. That is how I view them.

I had one such photograph of a sagging roadside mattress printed, matted, and framed as a 11 by 14 picture in a 16 by 20 frame for inclusion in an exhibition with friends. It was the glorification of a no longer wanted chunk of an unknowable individual's existence. It was a portrait in absentia, in which the person has vanished, not unlike the seventeenth century Japanese images of clothing haphazardly hanging over a screen: Whose clothing is this?

Seeing the framed image on a wall gave me joy.

The euphoria I experienced at viewing the framed photograph caused me to do likewise with more images of streetside, used, and discarded mattresses. It seems I currently have a dozen framed pictures of these awkward portraits of unwanted bedding. They are available as a small exhibition, a visually poetic display of rejected beauty.

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