Open during Construction

I have been thinking about my post yesterday, regaring how much of me is in my photographs. I will have to admit, up to now, you might not know that I have a engineering degree and extesnisve technical implmentation expreience by viewing my images. (or do you??) In a way, I have been avoiding that side of my brain, as I have rationalized that this is not my ‘artist’ side, way too “right brain thinking”. The key word here of course is rational;- )

As I have been steadily moving to a lot more autobiographical photographic process, I made a big step in overcoming my ouwn bias in starting a series (or two) that starts to tap into my interest in why things work like they do. I think it is part curosity, part of my technical orientation and a little of my interest in cultural antopology. Thus after two trips to China when I worked very hard to avoid all of the signes of the huge amount of construction and transformation occuring in China, I am not actually looking for it, wanting to take photographs of it and creating a series about it, tentatively called “Open During Construction”. Who wold have guessed?

I have also found that this series is a little easier for me to grasp and thus, will probably be the first series that I complete from my six weeks in China.  Part of what I have to internally rationalize is the body of work that I created inside one of the new factories and how that might work with this series or become an entire series of its own. Not that I have to make that decision now!  So first cut is what I think should be this body of work, then I will do a draft of the other potential series and test them as a unified body of work.

By the way, I have taken the title of this series from the many signs you find in America found around small shops who have big public works in progress, e.g. tearing up street in front for sewers or the such. The intent is to let folks knw that even if it hard to get to them and it may not look like they are still open for business, they are open during this construction.  Likewise, with all of the construction going on in China right now, they are very much open for business!

I never seem to know about these thngs until I spend some time pushing and pulling the images and concepts. Never seems to be an easy task.

Best regards, Doug