Richard Cary

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

My recent photographs explore the edges between portraiture and still life and between happenstance and deliberate artistic creation. The subjects are parts of papier-mâché Mardi Gras parade floats that are dismantled and stored in a New Orleans warehouse to be recycled for future parades. The scene is a surreal, chaotic mélange of figures from classical mythology and popular culture.

For me, these images are mysteriously compelling texts; they incite pure visual curiosity, the first step away from the ordinary. The spectacle of the dismembered float figures is a metaphor for the inexorable, mysterious recycling of our own personas. In these accidental still life/portraits, the deconstructed figures are relics of their played-out public identities, yet also ghosts anticipating the rituals that will transforms them into new made beings for the next parade.

I search for visual mysteries that transcend the tradition of photography as a literal, objective record. I prefer subjectivity. Photographs of visual experiences that evoke intense wonder or excite the imagination are texts that engage the artist and the viewer in an evolving process of creation.