Now: Here: This June 17, 2005
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Nick Holliday
Great Barrington, Massacusetts
I can't see myself in your situation
collage
Renee's proposed theme got me thinking about empathy. We have so little clarity about ourselves, that imagining someone else's experience is usually way beyond us. I could imagine, at least, the hurt in hearing from a relative stranger that, "I could never see myself in your situation." How does she know? From there, I imagined two women talking, and that the "situation" was a common one, a relationship in which the man turned out to be a "dog."
I used a photograph taken by Miriam Leuchter as the background for this piece. Appropriating someone else's work doesn't quite approximate empathy, but I did feel more connected to a community of artists taking as a starting point Renee's theme and then using Miriam's gorgeous photograph.
Miriam Leuchter
New York City
I Could (Never) See Myself in Your Situation
C-print
The girl was blasee; nothing could belong more, as she perfectly knew, to the intense publicity of her profession; but she had a whimsical mind and wonderful nerves; she was subject, in short, to sudden flickers of antipathy and sympathy, red gleams in the grey, fitful needs to notice and to 'care,' odd caprices of curiosity."
-- Henry James, In the Cage
Anthony Gonzalez
Washington Heights, New York City
untitled
collages
These images were loosely inspired by Renee's theme proposals: "I could never see myself in your situation" and "Walking a mile in another person's moccasins".
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