Make Maps, Not Photos is a quiet expression of hope for life untethered from the pretensions of an ordered world.
Without definition, what do we become? Assertions of who we are quickly merge into the tangle of the past when we look for a sense of ordered personal history. Any singular chronological line disappears into a mass of intersections, past experiences forming the amorphous mesh of self that shapes us. Trapped within this mesh, our view of the external world is obscured by the tangled strands of our own experience.
We reach out from within these mesh cages of perception, yet whilst netted surfaces might touch, they remain unbroken. We fail to free ourselves from our defining perspectives. Unable to pierce the boundaries that divide us from one another as individuals we are left to float within ourselves, suspended in silent observation.
It is only when we wander alone, that the walls containing us unravel. Alone self-definition becomes redundant, in solitary motion we become nothing but a shapeless eye. Without the assertions of others, we become freed from our identities, our certainty gradually fades, and we begin to experience ourselves as extensions of the external world.
Taken in pursuit of this state of detachment, these photographs are an expression of the uncertain gaze. Resisting the imposition of definition upon any single subject, they instead honour the freedom of the undefined passing moment and the liberating obscurity of wandering.
See more of the this artist's work: ivotaylorthomas.com
