Cloth States | Archives
I have been experimenting with a new photography series — selecting old and new images that profile cloth in partnership with a specific locale or environmental setting.
These ‘cloth states’ are records of a place but also serve to document the intimate aspects of how we live with cloth and allow it to envelope our environs.
Some ideas extend back to early travels in Asia and the Himalayas, where the display of cloth outside a window or on the packs of nomadic travelers is an expression of self or status in ways that transcend notions of material wealth.
More recent years in Bulgaria and Italy have allowed me to witness how the daily rituals of opening the windows of a home, the hanging of personal effects, and even the showcasing of regional curtains or textiles suggests so much about interior spaces and the lives within.
It now seems clear that involvement with the projects of Christo and Jeanne-Claude in my early twenties has stayed with me all these years. I never really wanted to approach things with grand display, but became aware of the suggestive play between concealment and transparency with cloth’s intimate fashioning.
[ all photos: Abigail Doan studio ]
