About The Photographs
Nobody looks at street lights.
They disappear amid the disorder of our urban detritus: neon, cables, signals, signs. Above the gutter and below the moon, they are everywhere and invisible in their ubiquity.
I sought this obscure subject because I wanted to explore the possibilities of finding new ways to imagine them; to elevate the unnoticed; to uncover something essential and beautiful in the quotidian.
These photographs were shot in Albuquerque, NM mostly in the winter months of 2007 in parking lots and strip malls, near abandoned factories, and in my quiet downtown neighborhood. I spent a lot of time on a street called Juan Tabo named for a shepherd who once wandered the foothills that swell against the Sandia Mountains.
But whose bright idea? When asked about the inspiration of his poems, Guillaume Apollinaire said: "Le plus souvent il s'agit de tristesse" ("It is mostly a question of sadness").