Photo Week Profile: Benjamin Tiven

I must preface this profile by saying I began writing this before reading HT's profile of Jason Oddy and decided I ought to read it before posting to ensure some sort of continuity of tone. I was struck by the similarity in subject matter but shocking difference in the reaction each evoked. When viewing the world through the lens of Benjamin Tiven, I see a world where chaos has resolved into symmetry, decay and motion has been halted, and absence no longer signifies loss. He chooses subjects (abandoned islands, forgotten fields and factories, ruins overlooking the sea) which once held life but now are still and empty. Despite this, there is not a sense of loss; the photos are at once elegiac and joyful. There is a sense that Tiven has not lost anything but has found an oasis of stillness. It is the world after Rapture -- Time has stopped, everyone has left, and Tiven has inherited the Earth. However, the photgrapher, meek, is also absent. When I view this images my mind knows that some agent shot these photos, stood in these structures, and strode on these fields. But the silence and stillness is so complete that these obvious, logical facts become unbelievable. The quiet is so absolute it seems impossible that it has been or ever will be disturbed. Tiven creates a Utopia for the agoraphobe and some hope that a world without us might not be such a bad world after all.

But more than any of this, I love these images because of how they make me feel. There is something about them that evokes a nostalgia for my rural youth, the art I tried to make in college, and inexplicably, math rock and hardcore. I see them and I hear "How Nothing Feels" and feel a longing to visit this world, if only for one frozen moment. But to invade this space would be to destroy it and in knowing that, I know loss. If anyone would like to start a "Buy MD the Governors Island series" fund, I certainly wouldn't stop you either. [check out Benjamin Tiven's work here.]