workspace. joseph o. holmes.

			statement :: workspace The images presented here are part of an ongoing project I call Workspace. Over long periods of time, workbenches, cubicles, and office desks go through an oddly natural process of accretion and erosion much like the way mountains and landscapes form over centuries. I don’t think there’s another place where evidence of an individual life is concentrated into such a tightly confined space. And I find that distillation beautiful in a way that’s artificial in the best sense of the word. Because I shoot a space exactly as I find it, my working style is necessarily spontaneous. I can't, for example, call ahead and ask to shoot a workspace without inviting the destruction of the thing I hope to capture -- work at the moment it's interrupted for the camera. Lately I’ve been finding workspaces by walking in off the street with camera and tripod and simply asking (though "simply asking" doesn't quite convey the complex dance of explanation, skepticism, persuasion, and fascination).