Frontière, Frontiera, Grenze more or less wrapped up in 2016, and my wife was pregnant for most of that year. I went from being in the mountains to increasingly low impact shuffling. I was also preparing two courses in which tableaux were more relevant than my landscape studies. Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Stan Douglas began looming large. I worked with no specific project in mind. It was fun to see a quasi-filmic strain emerge, interesting to let different influences express themselves. When the spring 2017 semester was over, the three of us -wife, boy, and I- had nowhere in particular to be. We drifted a long way before hunkering into domestic comfort. Most of the pictures I made as an expectant/new father can be sorted into three basic categories: old towns, family, and beach/shoreline scenarios.

I recently reread Wolf Hall again. This Vitruvius quotation is anchored between its Cast of Characters and Part One. Even though certain connotations don't quite fit, my three folders seem to make sense now.

Tragic: I still see these works as a type of homage to de Chirico’s Metaphysical Town Squares.

Comic: Larry Sultan’s Pictures from Home meets Mary Cassatt.

Satyric: So many Sunday Afternoons on the Island of La Grande Jatte.