If I Were a Superhero (2009)

Unable to remember the circumstances surrounding the accidental drowning of my father, my "Untitled (Hero Project)" is an attempt to reconstruct the alternate histories I concocted for myself as a child. My father drowned when I was two years old. As I grew up his death became part of my family’s legend. Growing up hearing the tale over and over again second hand led me to question how or even whether or not it had actually happened. My imagination ran wild with elaborate alternate realities. What if the person they found in the river was not my father? I clearly remember imagining (or hoping?) he had washed up on shore somewhere else, unable to find his way home. As a child, the possibilities seemed endless. I imagined that maybe if my father was out there, I could be the one to bring him back and erase the feeling of helplessness associated with the loss.

These images depict my desire to go back to recover the impossible. The child in the photographs stands in as a surrogate self, donning a symbolic mask and cape that gives him power and anonymity. In this role he is no longer a weak child, he is a hero. But a hero for whom? In this world of make-believe he is alone, a wanderer engaged in a personal crusade to discover himself.

This journey takes place in the contemplative atmosphere of the woods which become both a testing ground and a sanctuary. The forest is vast and magical as the hero explores it in search of something lost. In his search he discoverers a river. He finds himself drawn to it as it becomes both a path and a boundary.

Although the child is alone, there is another character that makes an appearance in the series — a cowboy figurine that the character finds in the river mud. The effigy is an idol of sorts, a reference to a similar wandering masculine archetype that just slightly predates that of the superhero. It is also a reference to the imagined character of my father because I know from photographs that he dressed in a western style. The recovery of this idol is both comforting and confusing to the character. On one hand, it seems like this is what he has been looking for, on the other it is just a facsimile of a desired experience offering another model in which to seek.