Artists Respond

Richard: I think the biggest, and perhaps only, plus that I am hearing from several people—particularly my son and daughter-in-law, Erica—is that they are having this unusual amount of qualitative time with their families. Jake, Erica, and Oliver (our two-year-old grandson) are spending lots of time together and absolutely loving that. And Oliver is thriving! That said, the hardship of almost every aspect of life globally today is heartbreaking and frightening. My work gives me a way to address what’s going on, perhaps as a therapy of sorts. On some small, personal level, I feel as though I am doing something.

I’ve been thinking about our relationship as we are quarantined together. I am so grateful for what we have after 33 years—we are so comfortable in this together, so to speak. And thinking about us together, isolated from everyone else, and this notion of social distancing, made me start noticing images in my archive in ways I hadn’t been aware of before. (It’s fascinating, actually, how a change in the world suddenly changes the way one reads a photograph.) I realized that I had photographed numerous “couples“ over the years—friends, romantic partners, parents and children, even people with their dogs—that reveal a broad range of emotions and relationships. They reveal all these permutations of “social distance” that play out normally in the real world. I am discovering new images every day as I look through my work.

I suspect this is of no surprise to you. Somehow, whatever comes up in our lives I simply process through my work. What about you? This is all so tense. How do you deal with it, especially in terms of social distance? Perhaps I should ask: is there anything in these pictures of people that makes you think about us (our coupling), especially now?

Myriam: What is shocking is that it’s only been a week of staying home, at least for you. I started staying home earlier. Time stretches forever. We had always complained that time passes much too quickly, so guess what? Now time has slowed down to a crawl because there is so much to think about, learn, and explore, which is how the brain measures time. When you are stuck in a routine, the brain doesn’t need to stretch. Now we have to figure out how to get food delivery, how to sanitize what we get, what to cook when, how to keep active, do work, keep in touch with people, etc. It’s a constant learning curve. We are stretching and time stretches with us.

Richard: At the end of each day (as we have done throughout all our years together), we sit in bed, hold hands, and watch something on TV. If I was photographing us from above, a god’s-eye-view so to speak, you would see a couple, close, surrounded by people-less space. Social space, indeed.

To inquire about any of the works featured in this piece, please email info@pacegallery.com.