"Dressed Objects / Wedding Party: How and Why"
DB, 1998

This series of sculptures and photos originated with my long-time fascination with Voudou. A few years ago I caught the huge Voudou exhibition at the Miami Art Museum. My interest in Afro-Atlantic music, art, food, dance and ritual has encouraged me to do many things: a film documentary on Candomblé, the Brazilian equivalent to Voudou, about 10 years ago, as well as presenting groups of Santeria and Voudou drummers in concert in New York City.

In the Miami show, which included "living" shrines and altars — i.e. ones that were being "fed" by members of the local Haitian community — there were some examples of wrapped votive objects — fetishes, as they used to be called. One was a knife and fork, wrapped in fabric, which appeared to me to simulate, to me, the dressing of the object. The wrapping appeared to be like a dress, which the silverware wore, and the clothing therefore also Animated the silverware — by dressing these objects they were given life. Or at least they were assumed to possess lifelike powers and energies. Although they were possibly only wrapped, I enjoyed and was inspired about the idea that they were dressed.

I immediately thought to myself, "What if this dressing were applied to lots of other objects? Would it give them life and a sense of power? Would they be elevated by this ritual treatment? Could ordinary object be given a kind of dangerous lifelike aura by merely dressing them? What if objects that already were somewhat anthropomorphic — furniture, for example — were dressed in this way? Would it be simultaneously funny and powerful?"

So I sketched these basic ideas out in my notebook and thought I could show them as both objects and photographs of those objects — and that, based on previous series of works I'd done I could, through lighting and framing, bring out the power in these objects even further through photographing them. By showing them, the object and the photograph of it together, the transformation produced by the photographic process would be obvious.

I wondered for some time how to create the clothes for these objects, which I began acquiring at discount stores and flea markets, and then I realized that the perfect person to collaborate with was a costumer, and that the costumer with the perfect sensibility for this was right under my nose, my wife! We had collaborated on fantastic costumes before, for my own performances and for my film True Stories, so I showed Adelle my crude sketches and she asked me some questions, refined the ideas and suggested some new ones.

So, with the help of artist Michael Daube we began to select materials, fabrics, borders and designs.

But as the objects started to accumulate and I began to think about photographing them I realized that my initial ideas and assumptions were wrong, or at least they would need to be revised. I realized that my normal somewhat clichéd technique of elevating objects by spotlighting them was not going to work in this case. I realized that instead of creating fetish objects, as I'd originally intended, we had created little people. A family, in fact. The objects had become animated and audible, as I'd intended, but in a completely different way that I had assumed. Rather than being contemporary votive objects they were caricatures of uncles aunts and other relatives—and when grouped together they looked like a motley group assembled and participating in a wedding. The lecherous uncle, the sultry ex-wife and the radiant bride.

So… I then began to photograph them not as shrine or altar pieces, but as relatives in familiar contexts. In their homes and gardens, with their possessions and furniture. And, in keeping with the Afro-Latin religious inspiration, I gave them all their names in Spanish.

As a final touch, I experimented with some framing ideas, and wondered about the possibility of achieving the look of automobile finishes on candy-colored frames. Each one a different color, keyed to a color in the photo. This turned out to be a perfect look to complement the images, but proved to be difficult to achieve. Cars' surfaces often have many many layers of paint applied to achieve the depth and reflecting qualities we take for granted. And then these layers are sanded and re-applied in a tedious time-consuming process, all of which is often automated at the factories, but here that was impossible. Stephan Petrik, the framer I have worked with for many years here in NY, was miraculously able to create this effect on wood.