Grids
When developing the structure of this project, I kept meditating on the problems of the grid. I love the grid. The grid is an organizing principle and offers efficiency. The grid is pervasive in Modernism, a fundamental discovery of the nineteenth century, but it has also always existed. Art historian Rosalind Krauss explains how the grid permeates all aspects of our world. It is something we return to again and again because of its ability to simultaneously mask and reveal. According to Krauss, the grid’s success is reliant on its structure as a myth and unrestricted narrative abilities. The grid also becomes a matrix of knowledge accessible from multiple entry points. But the grid is also oppressive and patriarchal, asking all to obey its construction. Even as it expands, it also conceals, simplifies, and divides. Beyond the context of painting, in which Krauss grounds her arguments, I see the grid everywhere. It assimilates to the rectangular shape of the book’s page. The grid is the form of a contact sheet in photography. It is a city block. It is a burial plot.
In making Burial Sites, I arranged my photos in grids, maintaining their integrity as spaces bound by four lines and right angles. Sometimes they didn’t fit together. There were awkward spaces in between and things became off-kilter. This misfit space became so important to me. It prevents everything from becoming knotted up tightly in perfection. It is in the negative space that we breathe, reflect, and grow. It represents the ghosts.
I hope that readers will also use the grid as a lattice in which to climb through and between, fusing their memories to my images.
When developing the structure of this project, I kept meditating on the problems of the grid. I love the grid. The grid is an organizing principle and offers efficiency. The grid is pervasive in Modernism, a fundamental discovery of the nineteenth century, but it has also always existed. Art historian Rosalind Krauss explains how the grid permeates all aspects of our world. It is something we return to again and again because of its ability to simultaneously mask and reveal. According to Krauss, the grid’s success is reliant on its structure as a myth and unrestricted narrative abilities. The grid also becomes a matrix of knowledge accessible from multiple entry points. But the grid is also oppressive and patriarchal, asking all to obey its construction. Even as it expands, it also conceals, simplifies, and divides. Beyond the context of painting, in which Krauss grounds her arguments, I see the grid everywhere. It assimilates to the rectangular shape of the book’s page. The grid is the form of a contact sheet in photography. It is a city block. It is a burial plot.
In making Burial Sites, I arranged my photos in grids, maintaining their integrity as spaces bound by four lines and right angles. Sometimes they didn’t fit together. There were awkward spaces in between and things became off-kilter. This misfit space became so important to me. It prevents everything from becoming knotted up tightly in perfection. It is in the negative space that we breathe, reflect, and grow. It represents the ghosts.
I hope that readers will also use the grid as a lattice in which to climb through and between, fusing their memories to my images.
Krauss, Rosalind. “Grids.” October 9 (1979): 51–64.