Have you ever wondered what makes us (humans) act the way we do? Why are we always looking to blame our difficulties and problems on someone else? What makes human beings racist? Or why do some think of themselves as superior or better than others? What drives people to commit murder and genocide? These are some of the big questions I’ve wrestled with most of my life. And this, at its core, is what my project, "In the Shadow of Sun Mountain," is about.
Over the past 30 years, I’ve made portraits of people from marginalized communities. I’ve asked questions about why we treat people that look different, have a different lifestyle, or believe something different than we do with contempt and distrust. If you read my statement from the work called "Portraits From Madison Avenue," you’ll connect the dots of why and how this started with me.
While I’m not a cultural anthropologist, I really connect with the kinds of questions they ask about human behavior. In a lot of ways, these questions have driven me to use a camera and become an artist. It’s the only way I know how to address these massive, unanswerable questions about our existence and our behavior.
So what is this work about? It’s very important to me that I communicate the details of this work explicitly (the ideas, not the images). I want to make sure the viewer is aware that this is not a documentary project about Native Americans. This project is about how the denial of death or death anxiety influences and drives human behavior. Every human being struggles with it. The theory of death anxiety is responsible for the genocide against the Native Americans.
These ideas are based on Ernest Becker's books "The Denial of Death," "The Birth and Death of Meaning," and "Escape From Evil." I’ve studied his theories for a few years now and have been heavily influenced by them. This is the first work that I’ve made where I directly address it and place the imagery into the theories. I’ve also been reading Sheldon Solomon’s work on Terror Management Theory (TMT) for some time. He co-wrote the book, "The Worm At The Core: The Role Of Death In Life." I had him as a guest on my YouTube show last year. I encourage you to watch it if you haven’t. These are the ideas that are driving this project.
Why is this important? To me, this work transcends photography. It's photography, but it’s not about photography. The photographs act as a catalyst to communicate ideas, questions, theories, and beliefs. And yes, the images are made where some of these terrible events took place. And there are images in the project about what the Ute/Tabeguache used; medicinal plants, for example, or the symbols they embraced. It’s not that the content is irrelevant, not at all; it’s just that the ideas are much bigger than the photographs. For me, this is what art really is-it provides a framework for a larger understanding of something or it can encourage thinking and questioning about the "big questions”. Things that all of us struggle with.
I would encourage you to delve into these theories and learn about them—really understand them. There’s a great set of videos on YouTube called "Conversations With Solomon." If you have any interest at all, you should watch them—there are six videos in the series. And, if you’re a reader, check out the books I mentioned earlier in this post. These are truly life-changing ideas. Becker’s wish was that everyone was aware of these theories. He believed that if you knew what made you think about "that person" or "those people" (“us” versus “them”) the way that you do, you would have a chance to think rather than just feel, an awareness that could change the dynamics of human behavior.