Children’s Games (1990–1994):
The photographs in this body of work represent an early iteration of my ongoing interest in psychological portraiture. The images describe moments that disrupt conventional expectations of childhood innocence and simplicity. At the time I made these pictures, I was particularly interested in children’s play and the kind of symbolic meaning that it expresses. The undeveloped conscience, or more precisely, the developing consciousness of children, is fertile ground to explore a wide range of human impulses: from the desire to nurture and love, to the darker imperatives of control, dominance, and anger.
Fairy tales, myths, and dreams underlie these photographs of children, and they demonstrate that children’s fantasies manifest these archetypal narratives. Awkward family snapshots and vernacular photography influenced me formally, as I intentionally included photographic accidents such as blur, movement, and selective focus to give certain photographs additional power and immediacy. During the same period, I also collected “orphaned” family snapshots of children in the flea markets and junk shops of South Austin. At some level, consciously or implicitly, I was emulating them.
The photographs were made in a very collaborative manner. I spent hours with the children in these images, and in most cases, years. I would select basic materials and a location (a game, a backyard, a stream bed) and then let the children play. I quickly became invisible, or at least unseen, as the children’s imaginations wandered into fully realized activity. And I began to photograph.
In all of the photographs, the children are seemingly unsupervised, enacting a world typically hidden from adult view. In this way, the backyard environment represents a second aspect of meaning: the space behind the home, beneath the façade projected forward, a secret or private landscape obscured from public view; the site of childhood’s rituals performed beyond parental vision: the part of consciousness that structures all human behavior.
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