The Modo Cycle
The Implications of Time - Modo.Click here to go to the Modo Image Gallery
In the evolution of my body of work, photographs taken over the course of 20 years - portraits, nude studies, and landscapes, the idea that time itself could be harnessed into a formal language - one that might transform the way people view themselves and their positions in the world was very important to me. I was fascinated by the blurs of movement that resulted from a photographic subject’s velocity through space. My exposures were often too long to capture it. I wondered to myself: what is the camera photographing when it translates movement into a blurry form? I realized after some thought on the matter that these blurs were the actual translations of time onto the film plane - i.e. the crystallization of time itself. It occurred to me that if enough of these blurry forms were collected that it might be possible to construct an entire language from them. This language would, in turn, be entirely different from any previously developed language because its symbolism would be founded on time as opposed to space. The philosophical ramifications of this idea are worth reflection. Because if it were possible to construct an entire artistic language based on time, as opposed to space, it would not only represent a completely new kind of photographic language if constructed in a comprehensive way. This language could also serve as a new and unique experience of reality - one that implies a “oneness” between all phenomena. In a sense, maybe this is a way to photograph God.