Tom Young- artist

I found the name of Tom Young while researching Eve Arnold and wrote down is name in my "artists to blog" notes. Today I found his website and went right to his portfolio and went "aahhh!" Maybe having a sinus infection right now is partly to blame for that reaction? HIs images made me feel dizzy and nauseous. They are fuzzy and hard to make out. 

I thought "what is the deal?" Being a some what smart person I concluded he must have a reason for his approach so I promptly looked for his bio or artist statement. On his website http://tomyoungphoto.com under "statement" it reads:

"When I was ten years old I went through a medical procedure that left my eyes fully bandaged for weeks. I remember well two things about that experience -- without sight my other senses changed greatly, and the darkness became somewhat familiar and at the same time fearful. I had heard that people who loose their sight acquire heightened remaining senses, and I was fascinated by this prospect. I would imagine visions of the world around me, often with areas merging into the darkness of my closed eyes. Saltine crackers were the only things I wanted to eat because their distinctive taste clearly matched my memory of them. Everything else tasted different, suspect. I liked to lie in the grass with my face burrowed into the earth. The quiet assumed a different nuance, both hollow and sumptuous. Certain sounds embraced the darkness, like the sound of the wind or water moving, something fundamental and solitary.

The photographs I have been making for the past thirty years are in part informed by a remembrance of that experience. The places I'm attracted to engage my senses in ways similar to those of the ten year old boy in bandages. I go out into the world to places where I sense something of meaning has once occurred and lingers. While photographing I feel out of time, blinded from my everyday life. I'm looking both out into the world and back into self, where the world in front of me appears both familiar and mysterious." 

That explains it! I can actually look at AND appreciate his art. It does still give me a bit of headache, but there's a sense of curiosity in his images. I want to look away but I also wonder what that thing is. I see what I want to see, but do would I admit what I see out loud? I wonder if he wants the image to be so open to the viewers interpretation. And when I consider his experience I think it must have been pretty scary for these images to be what he remembers.

I find some fascination in his editing. The edges are dark and rough and some images are scratched or blacked out. I think if I was trying to create a photograph of a dream I would try some of his techniques (mostly scary dreams). 

Young's work is not the "type" of work I have been studying or thought I would make myself, but the wheels are turning...