Finally – my latest image, “Zine #20,” is finished and online for you to view....
So I’ve reached my goal: to make a minimum of 20 photographs in this new body of work, entitled, “Zine” (short for “Magazine”). This imagery is unlike anything I’ve ever shot before. These pieces are abstract interpretations of landscapes, painters, music, architecture, sculpture, life, and even death (a friend of mine affectionately calls “Zine #18," “Road Kill”).
Unlike collages, these images are transient. I don’t glue down cut-up magazine shapes and photograph them. The slightest breath of air onto the canvas I’m working on could ruin the whole assemblage. In fact, I once sneezed and blew half of my Zine cut-outs off the canvas!
Create. Destroy. Create. Destroy. And then something happens....
As for Zine #20,” it was initially a struggle to create. I spent over four weeks toiling over an image that I simply couldn’t relate to.
Just as I was about to move on, I gave the piece one last attempt. I subtracted shapes and added them, I changed the canvas’s orientation, and suddenly I saw flying dragons. I thought of Botticelli’s, “The Birth of Venus,” with its angels that fly in from the side. A section of my work looked like this amazing angry cloud that was coming alive. And finally I got excited about the piece – this storm, fragments of bodies, strange out-of-scale birds, odd flying mechanical elements, an eerie underworld. (Yes, this is how my peculiar mind works!)
At last, I had found my way into the image. Finally, “Zine #20” came to life.
"Zine #20" Photograph by Steve LaVoie