Study of a Head (Tie-dyed Shirt & Lunar Simulacrum), 2008

In case you haven't noticed, pictures of people are rarely posted here & for a very good reason. While I might be able to invest a common weed with an architectural grace or even a certain air of upright, monumental nobility: I am notorious amongst my friends for taking consistently unflattering photographs of people. On the rare occasion I attempt to capture a personal likeness, experience has taught me to focus primarily on what they're wearing or some abstract formal element of the picture that has little to do (except, perhaps by chance, on a symbolic level) with their appearance. Lately the subject's face is most often partially obscured or totally out of the frame altogether. This portrait, complete with my mug playing an all too prominent role, is yet another example of why you should never, ever ask me to take the photos at your child's sixth birthday party. 

It was three o'clock in the morning. I found myself slightly inebriated from some very fine reposado tequila, couldn't sleep, was trying to constructively pass the time & if I look rather bored & cranky… I was. Still, this morning I tried to convince myself the photograph was really about the strange combination of muddy, green hues & that odd reflection at the left which is, just to clarify things, the simulacrum in the title. (As opposed to my big, round, sleepy head.)

Honestly… I suspect that posting it here was just the rare opportunity to use one of my favorite words, simulacrum (pl. simulacra).