Most people cannot recognize their own existential illusions. These worldviews do not appear to them as constructions—they feel like reality itself. Becker understood this well: the defenses only work if they are lived as unquestionable truths. To call them illusions outright is to destabilize the very structure that protects a person from the terror of mortality. Terror Management Theory confirms this dynamic; even subtle challenges to a worldview often trigger defensiveness or hostility rather than openness.
Otto Rank helps clarify why this is the case. He drew a sharp distinction between the “common man,” who survives by surrendering to collective illusions, and the “artist,” who refuses that surrender. For Rank, the common man finds security in what he called life-lies—cultural narratives, religious doctrines, and social roles that buffer anxiety at the cost of individuality. The artist, by contrast, attempts to live and create without such shelter, carrying what Rank called the “artist’s burden”: confronting mortality without metaphysical guarantees and transforming that confrontation into creation.
Becker extended this insight into a broader cultural frame. In The Denial of Death (1973), he showed how the symbolic self is built upon illusions of permanence, generating both neurosis and creativity as defenses against finitude. But in Escape from Evil (1975), he pressed further: illusions are not only fragile, they are dangerous. When a personal defense collapses, the individual may experience anxiety or despair. When a collective illusion collapses, entire societies can respond with scapegoating, violence, and othering. Here lies the paradox: what protects us from death anxiety on one level can generate destruction on another. Terror Management Theory has since confirmed its findings empirically; mortality salience heightens prejudice, hardens worldview defense, and intensifies hostility toward out-groups.
This is why it is nearly impossible to “show” someone that their ritual or belief system—whether a religious heaven, ancestor worship, or syncretic borrowing of Indigenous practices—is, at its core, a defense against death. To expose that fact is to strip away their armor. Instead, the artist can take a different approach. Rather than dismantling another’s defenses, the artist models another path: refusing denial, holding mortality in view, and metabolizing its anxiety into creation.
For me, this principle is embodied in the wet collodion process. Each plate is unstable, fragile, and impermanent. It can peel, crack, or fade at any moment. There is no illusion of permanence—only the presence of a fragile image that carries mortality on its surface. Unlike religious or cultural illusions that promise continuity beyond death, the collodion plate insists on impermanence, even as it becomes an “immortality object.” It shows that meaning can be created without pretending to transcend death. Its beauty is inseparable from its fragility.
The task is not to convince others that their illusions are false, but to demonstrate through practice that meaning can be made without them. In this sense, art becomes an alternative to illusion, a fragile but honest gesture against oblivion. A collodion plate does not promise eternity—it offers presence. It is a reminder that creation itself can hold mortality in view, that the refusal of denial can yield not despair but form, memory, and meaning.
My Fifth Darkroom Build
My new darkroom in Las Cruces, New Mexico. 12’ x 15’ x 10’—I’ll share more as I detail it out for use.
I think this is my fifth darkroom build I’ve done in the last 30 years—it could be more, but I remember the other four quite well.
This is 180 square feet and has a 10’ ceiling. It’s part of my huge garage. We only have one vehicle, so this space was sitting idle, waiting to be used.
The space without the epoxy floor—the “before” picture.
I have a dedicated office space in the house but needed a place where I can spill paint and chemicals without worrying too much. If you know about AgNO₃, you know what I’m talking about.
The space with the epoxy floor—the “after” picture.