Set in a taxidermy shop, The Trophy records a single action. A taxidermist flays the head of a deer for its preservation as a memento of the hunt. Framed at the torso, à la Robert Bresson, with his back to the camera, the taxidermist in turn falls prey to a dismemberment, albeit imaginary. I emphasized the cut, elliptically editing the image to ensure the taxidermist occludes the grisly sight of the buck's butchered head. Of course, this obstruction spurs the imagination. Bearing witness to the labor involved in preserving the algamic object of one’s desire, even at the cost of the thing itself, is it any wonder I chose as the soundtrack Al Green’s “I’m Still in Love With You”?
Daniel Chapman, a web developer, and I broke ground on the site June 8, 2015. My desire was to create a comprehensive space to house my art and corresponding activities, which include writing, teaching, screenings and my work in the field of contemporary psychoanalysis. Images of works from, and installation views of, exhibitions in most cases represent a portion of what was shown. The site is updated on an ongoing basis.
Site technical specifications are as follows: for back-end development, we used Rails with a Postgres database with rspec for testing; AWS and Heroku for hosting of the files and site. For the front-end work, traditional javascript and jQuery work, with Sass for design.
I’m grateful to Daniel for his expertise, creativity and commitment. For more information about Daniel and his work, click here.