Orgone Projector

This photo narrative follows the principles of ‘free association,’ as set down first by Sigmund Freud, then by André Breton and his collaborators. The sequence elaborates ideas drawn from Georges Bataille, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Wilhelm Reich, and Max Weber. From Emerson and Bataille, I derive the sign of the eye, less neutral receiver than potent projector. As such, it is encased by the steel hard shell Reich calls “character armor.” Thus, according to this modernist (anti) mythos, sex and art intersect in at least one shared function. Both shatter that shell, disrupt identity, and so, even just momentarily, free vision from the constraints of self-defense. This painful peel induces panic, vertigo, and breathless fear. In short, such a shattering produces that embodied imbalance the Romantics called the sublime. 

September 2024