Mark Allen Soderstrom

This series of photographs depicts written and visual communication removed from its context and presented as remnants. Each image is a found fragment of a message, or overlapping messages, left on blackboards in various educational institutions.

 

By isolating these fragments from their context, one can read them as messages in a void. These human-generated fossils read as monologs, defining themselves to each viewer. The marks recorded illuminate where the written language and illustration overlap, perhaps hearkening to a more “natural“ form of communication.

 

The darkness from where the scrawls emerge suggests the unknown. It is in such voids that our minds begin to project out of uneasiness. Unable to quiet the constant processing of pattern recognition and scanning for meaning our minds inevitably end up projecting meaning via feedback when presented with a lack of stimulation. By removing the message from their context and leaving them incomplete, I am interested in how the viewer projects their own narrative in an effort to create their own coherent meaning.

 

All works in this series are silver gelatin prints, approximately 13" x 12", from 1998.