Marc Yankus

Up the Avenue

2008

Archival pigment print (Edition of 10 APs) Signed, titled, and numbered in pencil, verso 11 x 8.5 inches, sheet 7.5 x 5 inches, image This artwork is offered by ClampArt, located i...

Archival pigment print (Edition of 5 + 2 APs) Signed and numbered on label, verso This photograph is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City. Frances F. Denny writes: “During the research process for a prior series of photographs, I discovered two related facts about my family tree: a) Mary Bliss Parsons, my 8​th​ great-grandmother, was accused of witchcraft in 1674 in Northampton, Massachusetts, and b) less than two decades later in 1692, my 10t​h​ great-grandfather, Samuel Sewell, presided as a judge in the Salem Witch Trials. One body of work came and went, but this ancestral coincidence stayed with me. What is a witch? Who does that word belong to—now? “Major Arcana: Witches in America​ is a collection of portraits of women from across the United States who identify as witches. As early as 15th-century Europe, people condemned as witches faced a cruel fate: torture, and in many cases, death. Yet despite its history, recent decades have seen a reclaiming of the word ‘witch.’ In the mid-20th century, emerging pagan communities in the United States and Europe began embracing the term, and since then, ‘witch’ has been adopted by a diverse group of people. “Major Arcana​ explores the various ways the notion of witch-ness belongs to those who claim it, representing the witch as a self-sought identity that both empowers and politicizes its bearer. Each woman photographed for ​Major Arcana​ (including genderfluid and trans individuals) pursues a form of witchcraft, whether aligned with a religion (like Wicca or Voudou) or a self-defined practice. No two individuals inhabit the term ‘witch’ in quite the same way, but many consider themselves pagan, and engage in a diversity of traditions, including: mysticism, engagement with the occult, politically-oriented activism, polytheism, ritualized ‘spell-craft,’ and plant-based healing. Among those included in the series are self-proclaimed green witches, white witches, kitchen witches...

I'D RATHER LOOK AT CLOUDS "…Here we go alone and like it better so...Now lying recumbent…this incessant making up of shapes and casting them down…this incessant ringing up and down of curtains of light and shade, this interminable experiment with gold shafts and blue shadows, with viewing the sun and unveiling it, with making rock ramparts and wafting them away – this endless activity…One should not let this gigantic cinema [of clouds] play perpetually to an empty house…" Virginia Woolf On Being Ill This series began from my bed photographing clouds tripping along the horizon of the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico, home to Los Alamos National Laboratory. I had just moved to my small studio perched high that I’d cobbled together over several years. My casual cloud gazing immediately became part of a pain-lessening arsenal - and how lucky for me living in an amphitheatre with an unexpected generous subject – a nearly 24-hour a day theater. The title of this series comes from an exchange with a friend about war...

“The hovering installations featured in this ongoing series of photographs are inspired by self-organizing, "emergent" systems in nature such as termite mounds, swarming locusts, sch...