Photographs taken during an observation of a tidal bore at sunset. A tidal bore is a phenomenon of the sea when the tide rises above an outgoing river. When viewing the bore, what is obvious at first is only that a large body of flat water is flowing in one direction while simultaneously the surface level increases at a very rapid rate covering stones, rubbish and finally the pier upon which I stood in order to photograph this process.

The fact that the sea reflects the sky became amplified in a sense contrary to a normal sea. In a “normal” sea, the surface is generally broken by multiple small waves thus diffracting the light. Still it is a general phenomenon that the sea is reflecting the sky. Please see images in this series taken in Santa Caterina for a further discussion.

The composition created in the end resulted from doubling the original image and rotating it 180 degrees. In addition to the bro- ken symmetry that is created, so too is a set of vertical horizons of water. One of the reasons it is potentially difficult to “read”

is because water is one of the elements that spreads horizontality and symmetrically due to gravity. Many other symmetric objects have a vertical element. ** (see the symmetric universe.....)

For a further discussion regarding the process of creating this drawing and its influence on the project, please see process notes below for Horizon Studies.

Similar to the image to the left, the composite drawing was created by doubling and then rotating the image by 180 degrees. In this case, given that the horizon was at an angle in the original drawing, the pattern that was created differs from the others in the series.

There is a broken symmetry between the pair of these images, between solids and voids.

Process note: while walking away from the body of mountains out across the salt flat (the remnant of ancient Lake Bonneville), I noticed my eyes trying to landmark on any item. I would notice small sticks and walk toward them.

The above images produces a strange effect that is a trope for what happens when observing an isotropic landscape: the cognitive dissonance and inability to identify the scale at which the original image was taken. The resultant image displaces the viewer in such a way as to bring scale into question.

Bonneville is the site of car racing and the site where the landspeed records for automobiles were set for a long time. The presence of these tracks indicates continued use of the Flats for such automobile purposes. Races are still held here, annually.

The original horizon studies were taken in Santa Caterina, Brasil, in November 2004 within the context of an ongoing project called Practicing Place. What does it mean to Practice Place? In the project Perforations (another corpus of works in Broken Symmetries, I make such an inquiry).

The original photographs themselves
I consider to be a kind of drawing.
The drawing then serves as the basis conduct basic visual experiments. For quite a period of time, I would go back to these drawings (see left) but I could not find the solution.

The concept of a solution is different here than in the normal sense. In the normal case a solution would be an answer to a question. In this case, my search for a solution means to find the underlying question or proposition. I would like to think that it was obvious, linear and straightforward. My objective is to show that a simple image that I took within the context of making other works, kept bugging me, if you will, for a significant period of time.

The image at the right is a composite and inversion of the sea, three different sites, but all related, all Atlantic of the coast of Brasil. They are then inverted and stacked on one another.

Further to the discussion on the photodrawing from the site Burnham on the Sea, notice the color relationship between the sea and the sky.

Process Interlude: under each Horizon Study are several other images that were created at the same time of the original image. The purpose of these is to give s bit further context and to demonstrate that though the final images share morphological characteristics of the flat horizon, absence of people, and a near symmetry, the sites themselves were heterogeneous.

Again, what became later important was the abstraction, rather than the direct reference to the original site.

These photodrawings, especially the one on the far left, was the origin of the Horizon Studies corpus of works.