ESOTERICA

An edition of ten numbered Portfolios and two Artist’s Proofs. Each portfolio contains fifteen black and white photographs printed on double weight, fiber based, 11" x 14" paper. The prints have been sepia toned, archivally processed, and mounted in 16" x 20" mats, dated, numbered, titled and signed on verso.

List of prints:

1.       Stocking, 1993

2.       Two Nipples, 1993

3.       Axis, 1994

4.       Nose, 1993

5.       Tara, 1992

6.       Silence, 1994

7.       Buttons, 1994

8.       Tongue, 1992

9.       Hook, 1992

10.   Crucifix, 1992

11.  Madison, 1995

12.  Mouth, 1994

13.  Three Nipples, 1995

14.  Fork, 1994

15.  Corset, 1994

In Latin, corpus transfixum means “pierced body”. The skin is the boundary between our physical body and the external world, and this series explores the duality of the internal world and the external world, the self and the other, individuality and relationship. Whether we welcome or resist, the external world inevitably breaks into our internal world, and it does this as immediately and intensely as a steel needle breaking through the living skin.

This series of photographs participates in the reappearance of a certain type of body modification in contemporary society. Body modification in some form has been practiced in virtually every society in human history, but the images here are perhaps most closely related to a pagan, or shamanistic worldview. This is a view in which the body can be freely used as an object for decoration, manipulated to induce pleasure or to alter one’s consciousness. Passing through an ordeal, as a rite of passage or in search of spiritual transformation, has been a time honored human endeavor, and here it reemerges in our time.