ALL YE MERRY PILGRIMS / PROJECT STATEMENT
2007-2008
This series explores the nostalgia, haunted heritage, and historical narrative regarding one of America’s oldest towns, a coastal village in Massachusetts.
The series begins with that sunlit Cape Cod village, Sandwich, drenched in the afternoon. The inhabitants have receded into oblivion. There is hazy twilight, pristine colonial houses, hedges, graves, all seeming strange. Gothic overtones are present. The magical blue-green marshes, the twinkling water amidst grasses, they have bones underneath. Witches live here: they own a store that sells obscure herbs and they sing songs at the beach every full moon. They have been here for centuries.
Scraggly, knotted pine trees are growing in the sand by the side of the highway. Here the horror of being alone with an ambient presence is felt. Here, rooted in ancestry and a deep social history relating to this place. There are no fast food chains here except for Seafood Sam’s, where you can get a lobster that comes with French fries that you eat in faux wood-and-burnt orange booths. To this quiet, old town, the psychology of open spaces is essential. Here exists the possibility of being ultimately, truly alone in a world that should be inhabited by humans but is instead populated by their ghosts. Here the mundane realities of life intersect with the mystical.
The images are a testament to the idea of presence and a connection to a rich past amidst the gaping spiritual void of contemporary America.