Monuments Of Man series: street lite with dramatic sky

Monuments of Man series: Lite Post with Dramatic Sky. 2022.

This photo series, “Monuments Of Man” officially began around 1992, because I had to finally put a name to some of the weird subject matter I’d been photographing for some years. Ironically, looking back at negatives and digital files, my other longtime photo studies are flowers and nature, especially trees.

Back in 2005 or 2006, I recorded a speech that the esteemed artist and activist Heart Warrior Chosa gave at the Ely Community College. She spoke of the seven tribes of the earth and while I cannot recall them all, I recall the Polynesian people were keepers of the oceans, her people Cree and Ojibway were the keepers of turtle island, and the people of Europe were the keepers of the trees. I was struck in the speech by my deep love of the trees in my own childhood yard – four or five big trees lined the yard, which as a child was it’s own forest. Then later exploring the “forest preserves” along the mass industrial sites of the south side of Chicago, the Calumet Region., where steel mills once ruled and now landfills were roamed only by maintenance workers and lost urban deer.