TRUST: Photographs by Frank Miller

August 15 - October 14, 2007

Artist's Statement

 I don’t like most nature photography.

Not that I mind it, I just don’t like it. I think the reason why is that often it shows the non-human world as a higher, more pure realm of existence. In fact, I often find that “Nature” is how people who don’t want to be troubled with the dogma and bloodlust of religion, replace the idea of  “God.” So instead of simply being nature, it must be treated as Nature, and I am intensely suspicious of grandiose, capital-letter ideas. They usually crush subjectivity and choice and are often the tools of those who believe that their [faith] is the only right answer for any question.

Instead, I feel at home in grey areas—the spaces in-between. Most of these photographs were taken in places that are neither wholly natural, nor wholly human-made. Virtually all were taken within 100-ft of a highway, a non-place that one goes to in order to be somewhere else. Photography is often used to bring clarity and definition – to pluck moments out of the stream of time and fix them so that they can be examined and considered. In many of these photos, though, I deliberately reduced the clarity, using the view camera’s movements to throw large portions of the scene out of focus. I found this to be both aesthetically pleasing and a way to accentuate the ambiguous nature of the locations.

It is not easy to live with ambiguity.

Humans recoil from the unknown and struggle to eradicate it. Without our ability to turn mystery into knowledge, we are defenseless in a universe that is vast, indifferent and deadly. Science, language, religion, are tools we have devised to make sense of the world, to create categories that make it possible to move from the haze of indecision toward action. This has been as vital to our survival as our ability to make fire.

But like fire, our replacing the unknown with the known can go out of control, growing as it devours everything around it. And, like fire, a prevailing wind can turn a flame into a sweeping inferno, and our need to categorize become a passion to annihilate anything that doesn’t fit. The Earth is perforated with mass graves filled with the results of this intolerance. 

I see the United States as at that point where our fears are becoming dangerous. We are separating into our enclaves and increasingly unwilling to find any value in opposing viewpoints. We imagine that the content of our beliefs redeem us.

But in a grey world, where things do not fit easily into tidy dichotomies, it is not our beliefs that matter, but our ability to believe in each other. This is difficult. It is the most difficult thing. We must move through our fears, instead of away from them.  These photos are about  this struggle, about navigating through a deceptive and unclear world. I call this piece “Trust.” Frank Miller 2007