The Watermill Center is founded by theater and visual artist Robert Wilson. When I arrived in the summer of 2005 with a Mamiya camera on loan from my school in Arles, the center was undergoing a huge renovation and landscaping. Artists and students from different disciplines worked side by side with the Hispanic workers who had difficulties in communicating in English. Apart from my usual routine to document the summer program with a digital camera passed over by the center, I would carry the Mamiya and wandered around in the site. Some of the pictures were taken during my encounter with the workers, to whom I asked to reproduce a certain gesture that I noticed in my observation. Some pictures were done in collaboration with the artists under the man-made landscape at the Watermill Center.
After my trip from the east coast, I discovered the country under a more intimate setting with its garden, backyard, living room, kitchen, etc...The uncanny feeling that I had for being in those spaces reached its peak when I found myself in a forest near the Lake Crescent in the state of Washington, a place where we encountered only tourists. If you listen carefully, the ghostly silence of the forest would slowly unfold its forgotten history - its colonial past. Unfortunately, the trees were the only witnesses left.
the birth of TYRANT
GOD you bless
the rest of the world is banished
open open
door
door door open
to the unborn tyrant
ring ring bell
milk the child
silk the child
door door open
to the tyrant
ring ring bell
open open door
to the god blessed TYRANT
zoo me
eye me, father in
europe, sister in
china, brother in nowhere
mother in my dream
here, me here
zoo me eye me
curious eyes
who are your mother ?
you don’t remember
even your mother
she has forgotten
her mother
good morning, america.
grandfather said
a man who kills for a cause
will always find his reason
a greedy man kills for money
a jealous man kills for love
an accused man kills for justice
a tyrant kills to keep his power
a humiliated man kills to reclaim his honor
a hungry man kills to survive
few years later
grandfather was killed
by two masked gunmen
for unknown reason
rosapark
rosa was brought up
in the park only in the park
they forbidden her to go out
to see the world/ the wide world the white world
rosa was black the black rosa in the park
among the yellows the pinks the reds and the purples
rosa and park rosa-park rosapark
when days went by rosa and the park became
one the one the solid one the stubborn one
the one who dared to keep her seat
in the bus that brought
her back, at the end of the day
to the real world
*Poems written by the photographer for this project
