Ron Gordon

There are times when I’m working that I am not content with a single image. In these moments, the subject is the movement of the natural world. My sequences represent my attempt to see and understand it.

Over the past few years there has been an evolution in my way of seeing. Political and environmental events have always had an impact on my work.

Most recently it has evolved into a fragmented vision. The world is coming apart and I feel incapable of putting it back together. The parts do not quite fit as before.

Fred Camper in the Chicago Reader described my work in 1998: “These little frozen movies remind us more graphically than most single shots that photography represents mere instants in time, scenes that were once different and will soon change.”

This puts my work on a mostly chronological plane. In fact, in those days, I tried to mark my spot and observe the subject from the same vantage point. Time moved through the grid of photos and the content changed, usually disappearing.

As this work evolved, the vantage point began to move with the subject. In the photographs that I am making now, the movement takes place on the level of time and space: I move, the subject moves and time continues to move on.

In May of 2007, Alan Artner, art critic of Chicago Tribune, wrote about my show at Prospectus Gallery, “When the shots are mounted side by side, sections will be repeated and dislocated, prompting viewers to engage with the subjects more fully in the process of sorting them out.”

The viewer spends time to take in the full piece but also is able to move backward and forward for as long as needed. While it is true that each photograph traps a moment, the overall experience is time expanded.

Ron Gordon Chicago, 2009 rongordonphoto.com