Ann Kaplan
Artist's Statement
My artworks look towards greater significance in the context of a deep contemporary complexity, where definitive meaning is often cast as suspect. Lingering in images that pause the viewer within micro-moments saturated with multiple, layered perspectives, we can slow down and sometimes stop the view. When our pace slows, we can dwell on how individual perception changes what we experience and offer a meditative consideration of the role of positionality in the creation of our reality. And when we begin to see our realities as constructed, we catch a glimpse of how truth and fiction collide.
Creative work often allows me to enter places that I would not have the courage or a path to otherwise. Thus, when Cold Mountain Review invited me to provide images for a special issue on the theme of Extinction, I felt myself going where I perhaps had not previously allowed. Have you wondered what the planet would be like if its primary rivals, human beings, became extinct? Yes, us. In our increasingly volatile world, this is not a fantasy but a distinct possibility. Would the earth prosper once its attackers were gone? The result is this set of photographs, that shudder while engaging what we might consider a wistful dystopian romanticism.