Artist Statement:
Contemporary snowboarders rely on hundreds of hours of smartphone and tablet video footage taken by each other and coaches as a way of visualizing their performances.
Witnessing this practice on a trip to Saas Fee, Switzerland, where I went to record and film Lucas Foster for a short looping video installation. Once there I became fascinated by the visual cacophony of these screens as every coach and snowboarder reviewed their progress in this way. A phenomenon that had emerged since my former experiences on the snowboarding junket.
This video work is a unique sculpture, a work of hybridity. I asked a group of snowboarders to send me their favorite video clips of tricks they performed during runs on the half-pipe.
Black Snow III presents three vertical images of four individual snowboarders, in four rows performing a variety of different tricks.
The color has been desaturated and inverted to recall black-and-white negative film. Converting the visceral experience of a body flying through space into a statement on figure and ground was my way of thinking about photography’s history of isolating movement and compressing (or expanding) time to create the illusion of simultaneity within the frame. A tribute to Edward Muybridge and Etienne-Jules Marey but with a soundtrack of, carving boards screams and breath.