The 100 Day Project #5
Precarious
Tucson, Arizona, USA, 2008
The 100 Day Project, Day 5
I have loved this photograph for a very long time. It’s the tension. It pulls me in every time.
A feather — delicate, out of place, a symbol of flight and lightness — resting against the sharp edges of shattered glass and the grime of a gravel parking lot. These elements have no business being together, yet here they are and it’s absolutely beautiful to me.
What I love most is how this image changes with me over time. During hard times, the feather reminds me that the winds of change will come, and when they do they'll lift me up and propel me forward. During lighter times, the glass and gravel remind me that difficulty can arrive without warning — and it often has in my life, shattering paths I had built and forcing me onto paths I would not have seen otherwise. The photograph holds both truths at once, and I find that quietly reassuring.
This photograph was made during The Invisible City, a five-week, site-specific experimental arts lab exploring public space in downtown Tucson. Co-directed by Lisa Bowden, the project was a collaboration between NEW ARTiculations Dance Theatre and Kore Press, a Tucson-based feminist press.
The project brought together over 20 women artists to create texts, dances, sound pieces, film, photographs, and drawings within Tucson's urban core. It was an experiment in merging the creative processes of artists working across distinct disciplines in a city slow to revitalize — one that had historically valued highways and tract housing over central plazas, affordable live/work spaces, and desert landscape. In Tucson, public space had become decentralized, dehumanized, and in many ways invisible.
Through writing, dance, music, and visual art, we envisioned and activated new workspaces out of vacant parking lots, city plazas, and sidewalks. Our laboratory experiment culminated in a multidisciplinary performance incorporating video projection, spoken word, live music, and modern dance on the roof of a parking garage.
I loved being part of this project. Many of these photographs remain among my favorites — and this one perhaps most of all. Softness in a hard place. It never gets old.
About the 100 Day Project: A global creative challenge where thousands of artists share a piece of their practice every single day for 100 days. I'm joining creatives around the world, and I'm excited to bring you along. Each day I'll be sharing one of my photos — some recent, some old, and some from my current project — along with the story behind it: where I was, who I was with, and why I love it.