The crossing – A Photographic Meditation on the Atlantic Ocean
Between May of 2015 to May of 2019, I was a passenger aboard the Queen Mary II on seven transatlantic crossings between New York City and Southampton, England. These crossings mark what could be considered my allegorical return journeys to Europe in homage to my mother and father, and, during the westward crossings, a retracing of their destiny. Fleeing what would become World War II, my parents independently left their respective homes in Eastern Europe and sailed to America in late October of 1938 aboard the original Queen Mary, on which they met and fell in love. Their time on the stormy autumn seas proved to be more than just a pragmatic decision. It was also a romantic and prophetic passage, not just across an ocean, but one from fear to hope and probable death to life.
The Atlantic Ocean became my lure to comprehend their experiences on that fateful transatlantic crossing, and as a canvas to study the geography of memory. It also tugged at the adventurer in me. I wanted to witness the graceful 360-degree, uninterrupted eye-level view of the curvature of the earth and try to comprehend the scale of an ocean, set against the vast expanse of the cosmos. I wanted to submit to the earth’s steady rotation eastward, felt and seen in time attuned to the sunrise and sunset and through the visibly changing light playing off of the ocean’s surface. My elegiac crossings were about pulling away from the known. I thought often of my parents and how they said goodbye to everyone and everything they knew and loved before their mournful and blissful crossing, and how it must have taken on deeper meaning as the war years added up.
These journeys from continent to continent, across an ocean and across time, marked another chapter in creativity by ushering in a more profound return to painting, again with light. I chose to photograph with color transparency film solely from the perspective of the ocean. I still love film for its alchemy and mystery, the random nature of emulsion and the necessary creative suspension in not being able to see the results until the film is developed. This medium is purely about technique, instinct and trust. The core of my creative practice has always been external and physical, a matter of immediacy and place. I never travel with expectations about what I’m going to see or experience—I prepare as best I can, but then when I’ve embarked on a trip, I surrender to the circumstances of chance. After the first crossing, I knew that I would embark on more of them, as I needed to keep holding the light from the ocean inside of me. With each subsequent crossing, I deepened this photographic meditation and exploration of this breathtaking subject while going further inward, into the experiences of how it feels to cross an ocean and to understand it from the aspect of emotion. Often, the sea state would mirror my own state of being.
