The deserted house sat atop a low hill, about 40 yards up from the gravel road. I wheeled the car into the rutted dirt driveway and pulled out of sight behind a tumble-down barn. The plank walkway that led to the house was overgrown with wild oats and yellow sweet clover. In the field out back, a broken-vaned windmill spun lazily. Its rusty-throated groans rose and fell on the wind.
The back door was warped shut. I put my shoulder to it and shoved into the kitchen - a ruin of mould and rot. Pigeon droppings had collected in small piles on the table, letters and bills lay strewn over the counter beside the sink, the gaily-painted plaster walls were crumbling and water-stained. I picked my way into the living room, stepped over rusted machine parts and empty plastic pails that once held weed killer and fertilizer. An armless baby doll rested on the sill of the window that faced the road. A pickup truck sped past and raised a plume of dust that dissipated across a near field.
I found the perfect spot in an upstairs bedroom. Though what exactly I found is impossible to describe: a feeling, a presence, or maybe just the quality of light? It took several minutes to discover the best angle, then I erected the tripod and attached the camera. I focused the lens and sat by the window for a few minutes to watch the road. Finally, sure that no one was approaching, I disrobed and piled my clothes beside the tripod, set the timer on the camera and moved into the picture.
I can't remember what got me started, but I have a series of photographs in which my naked body is a participant in each scene. The series developed over a period of ten years and there were rules: each image must stand alone, without the naked figure, as an expressive photograph; there must be visual evidence of abandonment; the figure must be actively involved in the composition; and, finally, no fully-exposed genitals. The collection can be regarded, simply, as a body of work entitled Checking the Wreckage. But the naked figure can also be viewed as a symbol for memory. Or a wandering spirit. It haunts places where people once lived or worked or worshiped. Places where memory clings to discarded artefacts. Maybe it's searching for something?
I have always been fascinated by ruins: fallen mine works with hand-hewn beams still propping-up precarious structures; roofless fieldstone houses once carefully constructed stone by stone; near-ghost towns with dust-blown facades; bankrupt factories. These are the haunts that stir my imagination, like half-told tales. I imagine bells ringing from lonely bell towers; the sound of a mallet issuing from the darkened doorway of a ruined blacksmith shop; the gleeful cries of children playing in old school yards; harnesses rattling and wagon wheels bouncing along rutted roads. I would like to believe in poet Richard Hugo's Good Dream where "A local process,/ no patent applied for, cuts name, born date/ and died too deep in the headstone to blur." Everything richer and harder-earned. But I know better. Like I know that it's only illusions I create with my photographs, the sense of a lingering spirit.
Each deserted place evokes a particular sensation, and being naked makes me more vulnerable to those sensations, or spirits. I have never felt more exposed than the time I stripped in a deserted meat packing plant, in the room next to the killing floor. Long, dark corridors led maze-like through the ruined structure. The first thing I noticed was a lack of birds, especially crows - as if even those scavengers shunned the place. I am lurking behind some garments hung from the ceiling. Rubber boots and overalls lay strewn over the floor, as if discarded in haste on the last day of work. The strong side-lighting comes from where a fallen metal staircase ripped out part of the wall and tore loose several large pipes, from which oozed a greasy, black liquid. Rotted hides lay piled in a room just beyond the near doorway, still stained with patches of dark blood. It was in that room where tens of thousands of cattle bellowed against death as a spiked pendulum split their skulls. I think about that place whenever I buy beef.
I have been told that this series of photographs is mere exhibitionism - my body, naked, on display. But in several of the photographs the figure seems to be trying to exit the scene. Not surprising, because I have never much liked being singled out, and have always had a curious sense of shame about my body. A friend of mine got over his fear of heights by taking sky diving lessons. In this context, maybe my posing is therapeutic. An old trick. At the moment of exposure, I have to face my fear of being naked. It has been suggested by some women friends that this is a typical male response. Maybe that is partly true? Or maybe just another way to hide, a disguise? Hey, I'm no weirdo, I'm an artist.
I have other motives, concealed beneath layers of caution. I was a shy child. Everything scared me. I rarely played sports or joined clubs. Once, in a locker room after a swim class, an older boy pointed to my penis and said, "look at the tiny thing". A casual enough brutality, customary among adolescents. But it bothered me for years. It wasn't until my second wife that I realized my penis wasn't small, but perfectly fine and in good working order. How many people have internalized such common brutalities and let fear rule their lives? It is possible that this childhood experience has something to do with the rule against exposing my genitals. I tell people that it is an artistic decision - the figure is meant to be symbolic of a ghost, the penis would distract from my intent. Whatever the real reason, the rule stands - no balls.
This life seems to be a peeling away of layer after layer of motive and caution, merely to reach some simple truths, all of which I will never really understand. But answers could be at my fingertips, quite simply, in living itself - sensations, touch, the feel of wind and rain and sun. I have not learned much about the meaning of this life, but I believe it has something to do with the slow-beating heart of the earth, the imperceptible motion from floating on a sea of lava, and in the way that the horned moon grins - what begins, must end. In the face of this immenseness, this dwarfing of human endeavour, there must be laughter. So humour is another of my motives. Let's face it, the act of stripping in deserted places to photograph my naked body borders on the ridiculous. But I am compelled, as an artist, to deal with borders and things ridiculous. I need to explore juxtapositions, incongruities, to turn icons on their sides and look beneath, to rattle my mortal chains. I am the naked tourist on a tour of little-known historic sites, a clown with no costume who performs visual gags.
I remember the time that I stripped in a relic United church on the outskirts of the almost deserted town of Dorothy. I stood inside the musty building, naked, and peered through a slit in the boards to wait as a cloud moved off the sun. Just then a car drove up and a man unloaded some large format camera gear. Afraid that he might want to come into the church, I dressed quickly, but he set up about 20 yards away. I watched as he pulled a black cloth over his head and imagined him moving his magnifying loop from corner to corner over the ground glass on the back of his 4 X 5 camera. I don't know what got into me, but I moved into view, framed by the window. Weather-beaten and scruffy-bearded, wearing coveralls and a ragged hat, I looked every bit like an old hermit. He yanked off the black cloth and looked at the church, but I had slipped back behind the wall. He shook his head - probably deciding that what he'd seen was some aberration of glass and light - and went back under the cloth to focus. I waited for a few seconds and then appeared in the window again. He tossed the cloth to the ground and stared in disbelief. But I was back watching through my peephole. He packed up his gear and left. God only knows what went through his mind? I waited until his car was quite a distance away, and then stripped to take my shot. Sunlight arched through the window and cast a pattern at my feet, where I was sitting bent forward on an old wooden bench. I felt like a real imp.
The first shot in the series was taken in a stand of poplars below a ramshackle house. There were a couple of abandoned cars in the grove - one had a sturdy, young tree growing through the front window. In the photograph, I am running through the scene, partially blurred, with a long stick held in one hand as a hunter might carry a spear. I see a relationship between the stick and the cars, as artefacts or tools; between the motion of the body and the motion implied by the cars; between ghosts, the blurred body, and things abandoned.
I am always nervous. I fear being discovered. Outdoors the fear is not nearly so bad, because I can usually see all around. The sun and the wind on my naked flesh make me curiously lightheaded and sensitive to my surroundings. Indoors is different. I am tuned to the sound of passing vehicles. There is usually bird shit. Sometimes rusted nails or the bones of a cow or a slaughtered deer or a poisoned coyote. I remember kneeling naked before an altar, as my foot bled from a piece of glass stepped on while moving quickly between the camera and the pose. I could have removed the glass and wasted a frame of film, but it seemed appropriate - that bit of my blood. It is not visible in the photograph, but the memory remains. My heel hurt for days until the sliver worked its way out.
Sometimes I need someone to cock the timer. Ten seconds often isn't enough time to arrange the camera and move to the chosen pose. My various travelling companions used to make derisive comments, but they've seen the photographs and can sense something more in them than just their friend naked in some strange place. Still, each friend reacts differently. I imagine it's quite unnerving - to never know exactly when or where I might choose to strip. Once, in a lonely bell tower on the edge of the Dirt Hills in central Saskatchewan, I climbed 25 feet to the belfry. Then, balancing carefully on the loose and weathered planks, I picked my way across from the camera to the bell. You can't tell by looking at the photograph, but a fierce wind pelted sleet against the unsteady tower. It blew the door open and dust and feathers swirled like an angry dirt devil. My friend below was hard pressed to keep the door shut, all the while he looked up and wondered what he would do if I fell. How would he explain my naked, twisted body? Should he clothe it before going for help? The nearest help was about half a mile away, a farmer seeding a field.
Each photograph contains a memory of the actual place, its precise location. For example, NW 22 55 13 W4: a Ukrainian Greek Orthodox cemetery on a hill in rolling countryside. Valleys and hollows wind down to a bend in the river. It is a landscape of farms and small towns, country churches with onion-shaped domes. The rows of the cemetery are lined with tall iron crosses and crosses of crude cement. Most of the grave markers are attached with miniature photographs that reveal the faces of the dead, including most of the original settlers. Cloth flowers lay everywhere strewn by the wind. I am balanced on a large wooden cross that has fallen in the bush. One hand stretches down to the earth, while the other appears to be groping toward the light. But I am merely holding myself steady because of the long exposure, and shading my eyes from the sun. I remember that a farmer was spraying the adjacent field, circling closer on every turn. I have no explanation that he would understand.
The photograph also evokes other memories. My past. There is a ranch operation near the cemetery, where I once worked as a hired hand for a crusty wrangler who had smashed his arm. He never did tell me exactly how he broke it and was quite irritated when I asked. My various tasks included stringing barbed wire around parcels of pastureland, and repairing portions of old fencing that had got gnarled in dense thickets. I worked with a tractor and a wagonload of posts, a sledgehammer, some U-shaped nails, and a claw hammer. The claw hammer was also used to pull the wire tight, a nifty trick demonstrated by the wrangler, who could do it with one hand.
I spent long hours alone, stringing fence around what used to be small farmsteads. I would often take my lunch into some deserted house and snoop through the rooms. I tried to imagine the last people to live there. They left evidence: a cap on a hook by the back door; weathered-stiff coveralls and a grease-smeared jacket flung one last time over the back of a chair; a set of false teeth in the cupboard above the sink; lengths of binder twine looped over the knob of a door; coils of wire and big-toothed gears piled on the floor; a cut-tin flower fashioned from a tuna can nailed to the wall at the end of a hallway; a row of ties suspended from tiny hooks in the wall of an upstairs bedroom; a pair of high-heeled dress shoes in the closet. There were often old magazines or catalogues, sometimes a scrapbook with schoolwork or newspaper clippings. Cards for anniversaries, birthdays, or in memoriam.
I remember that the wrangler, though injured, still frightened me. He was fiercely proud of his Morgan stallion and made jokes about how he was always ready, "just like my horse". Then the wrangler would wink at my wife. We stayed at the ranch for five months. One night I packed quickly and we left with our few possessions. But my wife was angry. She had wanted to get a horse and keep it in the corrals. The wrangler was agreeable enough. I finally did buy her a horse, about two years later. We were living in yet another country house. She left anyway, and took our young daughter with her. I wandered the rooms of that big farmhouse, howled our daughter's name for hours. I found her portable potty and, in a moment of complete self pity, imagined that the remnants of urnine were the only link I had left to my daughter.
What a thing memory is. To remember is to have more than one life, and I have lived several lives, always rebuilding over the wreckage of the past. Two failed marriages, dozens of jobs, and as many landscapes called home. Tons of baggage hauled west across the prairies, through mountain passes to the sea, and south to the border deserts. Looking back, it seems that I intended none of it. I travelled here and there in reaction to forces or events that somehow triggered a move. For some reason it was time to pack up and leave. Always new starts. New furniture. New pets. New resolutions. But each new home soured. I was stuck replaying the patterns of my youth.
My family moved from rented house to rented house, in either Calgary or Edmonton. And in between was the resort town of Sylvan Lake. I can not recall a single one of those rented houses, no one room or yard stands out. It is all a blur, the memories are locked up tight. But I do remember our cottage at the lake. Every summer holiday spent at Sylvan Lake was like really going home. My fondest memories of growing up come from that crude cottage, and I am still drawn to small, old houses with covered porches. It was there I learned that the man we called Uncle Stan was in fact my father, there I began my first awkward gropings toward the discovery of my sexual being, and there I landed my first job, selling salted popcorn on a hot beach. The job did not last long. Nor did any job for the next 20 years.
I found grade school to be a huge bore, semester after semester. I felt that my teachers did not know all that much. There were huge gaps in history and none of it made any sense. In grade ten we were still colouring maps. I left home at 15, came back every so often, but was gone for good by 17. While most of my friends earned degrees, started careers and built their savings, I wandered from basin to ridge up and down the spine of North America. My education was in popular music, Tarzan novels, Classics Illustrated comic books, and science fiction. My religious training consisted of Christian Science Sunday school, where I was informed that all things mortal are a form of error. That was it. No rituals to bridge this life with the life of the spirit. I have had to arrive at those on my own. Considering the number of my friends traumatized by over-zealous Sunday school teachers who wielded hellfire and guilt, I am probably better off.
Nonetheless, there is a photograph that shows my body spread naked on an altar in an abandoned church, and I have to admit that I felt guilt. Maybe I am just a brat who wants to taunt God into giving me a sign of some sort? But I like to think not. I want the image to portray wonder, not disrespect. I still feel a humbling presence in deserted churches. Yet it is not God that I feel, not in any traditional sense. I believe the presence that I feel is caused by the ghostly echo of voices once raised in song - it is not the hymns but the singing of them that fosters faith or hope. The words could be in any language. Sometimes I find an old pump organ or a piano, and then I will sit naked urging notes from the stubborn keys. I play the only thing I know, a rambling melody with no end, something that I made up years ago on my grandmother's piano. And it is hymn enough.
If I had to pick a favourite photograph, it might be the one of me sprawling naked on a medicine wheel - a circle of small boulders placed ages ago by native Indians to mark a sacred location. The land falls away to the horizon. You can see the curve of the earth. What you can't see is the wind or smell the sweet sage. Sensations that evoke childhood memories from when my brother and I climbed the hill at the edge of town. We spent hours clambering about in the crevices of a huge boulder, and imagined it to be a meteorite. Back then I thought that the land went on forever, that things had always been the same: fences, horses, cowboys, my small city at the edge of the mountains. Sure, people were always building new things, but some part of the world must be constant, and I wanted a piece of that constancy. I had yet to wrestle with the anarchist view of property as theft, or Heraclitus' belief that everything is like a river - all things go and nothing stays.
The family farm, settled by my great-great grandfather, was sold long ago to pay for condominiums in the city. The cottage at the lake is long gone. My father (once Uncle Stan) constructed his home of wood and stone - a monumental structure that overlooked the expanse of Lake Okanogan. He built his castle to boast that, although descended from poor peasants who had homesteaded on the prairies, he was finally a prince of the New World. A few years after his death the castle was bulldozed and the property was sold. His ashes were moved from the spot that he had picked on the property, beside a fresh-flowing stream, to the drab and orderly municipal cemetery.
I chose the photograph of the medicine wheel as my favourite because it comes closest to expressing what I like to imagine is my inner self. Everything about the photograph seems right. You can hardly discern the body, the skin tones are the same shade as the rocks. The body is centred, part of the wide sky and prairie - a landscape, a romance. Like most everyone, I would like some peace on this earth. And, spread on that medicine wheel, naked as the day I was born, I felt a part of something mysterious and true.