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Artist Statement for Steven Kosek
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I have had a lifelong interest in perception, reality and the human mind's compulsion to find patterns and derive meaning in the world around us. This interest has lately expressed itself in an ongoing series of mountain streambed photographs, collected mainly during hikes into the nearby Gila National Forest in New Mexico and the Coronado National Forest in southeastern Arizona.
Creeks and streams turn out to be an excellent starting place for thinking about the way that seemingly random arrangements of stimuli can be perceived as non-random and meaningful by the human mind. Standing creekside in the forest with my camera hanging out over the flow, I am often distracted by what sounds like distant voices or snatches of music. But inevitably, it is only the sound of water that I'm hearing as it falls along the rocks further up or down the creek.
Of course, we hear the brook babbling or singing because the mind wants and needs to recognize things it knows. And so it takes what is available, in this case, the stream of notes and tones created by the flowing water, finds audio shapes it seems to know and thrusts it upon our attention. I trip over the same phenomenon while looking at many of my streambed photos. Sometimes, the recognizable shape that emerges from the chaos is hard to escape, as in "Face in a Vortex," where a watery edge created by the current in a Sedona, Arizona creek forms what appears to be a human profile. In other cases, the overall image is unrecognizable, but within it lurk faces of people, animals and unworldly creatures.
I suspect that what you see in those instances tells you more about your own mind than it does about the streambed. It is also interesting that once you have sighted an image in the mix, it becomes impossible not to see it. For instance, I first enjoyed "Rabbit Dreams" for its color and overall flow--and of course for the rabbit resting in the lower right-hand corener. Then I spotted the head and shoulders of a small aboriginal figure on the left. Now he is one of the first things I see and enjoy when I look at that photo.
I don't know what it means that I see that little aboriginal guy and the myriad of other faces and forms that materialize unexpectedly in "Rabbit Dreams." Perhaps the randomness of the patterns created by the water breaking over rocks and the connection between those patterns and the things in my mind are completely accidental. That the effect is pleasing is more than enough and it motivates me to click on down the creeks in hopes of capturing more such serendipity.
Steven Kosek
Silver City, New Mexico
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