“Closed” ŠTim Best

I revisited this image from a performance I did onsite at a Washington Mutual Branch that was about to be torn down. I was invited by Tom Feulmer and Christina Rees for their on site exhibition “Modern Ruin” in Feb 2010.

Backyard Fence 34x22

This image will be appearing in the “Home” exhibition at the Center for Fine Art Photography opening on March 2nd 2012.

This project takes cinematic, mythologic and biblical references and ties them together in a narrative format that follows a five part structure including prologue, beginning, middle, end and epilogue. There is one photograph per part of the structure so there will be five images in the end.  The imagery I staged and captured in these photographs are signs and symbols of contemporary money culture.

The series is in progress.

anger from 'making a scene'

Check out my new book on Lulu from my ‘making a scene’ project:

“Business Man” is one of my very first projects from back in 2005. In fact this group of images was due to show in October after hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans (where I was living at the time). So the prints evacuated with me and I was able to get them framed in Florida and shipped to Boston in time for the show.

The guy in the images are me however I don’t consider these self portraits. They are images from a dream sequence I had so I consider them an unconscious expression of something. Not sure exactly what but I think my inclination is to get dressed up when I am performing. Or at least I think I’m supposed to!

When I think of spiritual ecstasy I think of feeling horror and euphoria at the same time. Two opposites occurring simultaneously. Something else that occurs simultaneously in these photos, as do all photos, is the real and unreal. At once the “real” is recorded whether in a studio or in the environment, and the “unreal” image that never existed before the photograph was taken. In that spirit these characters are ‘out of context’ illuminated only by a spotlight signifying a performance for the camera. They are strange but undeniable.

Guardrail Damage Ahead exhibited at 500x in spring of 2009. This was my first show at the gallery as a member. The idea for these images came from 2 sources. The first being the movie “American Psycho” where an upscale trust fund baby couldn’t fulfill his adolescent appetites so he went on a killing spree. The second source was my studio. I was doing a lot of sculpture at the time and working with power tools. I decided to use them in these pictures not only because of the reference to the movie but they actually helped ‘make’ the images.

My latest project is entitled “making a scene” about emotion and performance. I began shooting this project in August 2010 until December 2010. During that time I worked with 20 actors and shot 3000 images. I called out emotions to each actor and they improvised a performance on the spot in front of the camera. The resulting images are below. Scroll down past the images for a book and a video featuring local actors Sydney Daly, Lulu Deboer, Heather Sims, Jessica Robinson, Paul Vaughn and Laurel Whitsett.

Making a Scene Project Statement:
Emotion, in my life experience, is the root of all drama. In this body of work I direct actors and models through a sequence of emotions. Rather than assume the role of observer in a dispassionate way, I choose to actively set up these performances in the studio. The resulting photographs are surreal, subconscious reconstructions and rearrangements of ‘reality’ that come out of the experience of improvising the emotions. The chiaroscuro of the spotlight illuminating the figure in the darkness implies a tension between real life and the imaginary. The work takes on a dramatic focus, which is the basis of my art.

Video:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1337526/