Hawaii 2009

Richard Ross took this photograph, 'Hawaii', sometime after 1947. It's an image that pulls you in, and leaves you with so many more questions than answers. I’m thinking about that figure hunched against the wall; the paint peeling off, the basketball court stretching into the distance, enclosed by razor wire. I wonder what he was thinking at that moment. Was it desperation? Or something else, something beyond my reach, beyond what I can imagine? When you are an artist, you make marks or gestures and these communicate feeling, intention, or meaning. A photograph is like a captured gesture. It's about trying to find a shape, a pattern, in the chaos of feeling. It makes me think about how artists are in an ongoing conversation, exchanging ideas across time and inspiring one another’s creativity.