Oshang, Photomontage, 24 x 36 inches, 2009.
Chalkboard Series
A couple of years ago I began to pay close attention to the unerased chalkboards in the classrooms I was teaching in at Boston University. My seminar room was often covered with a patchwork of technical and mathematical symbols I usually did not fully comprehend but that I found visually exciting and so began to photograph them. The next term I followed a philosophy class and continued to photograph the chalkboards. In 2008 I started methodically working my way through the arts and sciences building photographing extensively. After accumulating a large inventory of images – some covered with the scrawl of mathematical and engineering symbols, others with bits of language and text - I began combining these images digitally into large photomontages that are richly layered and often mysterious combinations of found text and marks.
Much of my work in photography has been about chance, found marks and the elusiveness of all mark making. I have photographed sequences of snail drawings in wet sand and raked sand dunes into large Zen gardens. I have always been fascinated by the role chance plays in life.
>> Continue