Lost

Sometime in the summer of 1975 I stepped outside an apartment in San Diego to take a photograph. I was staying with people I barely knew and was marooned in a world of sun, beach, and continuous social interaction. Like Marcel Duchamp, whose art I then admired, my purpose in ‘taking’ a photograph (as opposed to ‘making’ one) was to produce an image of ‘visual indifference’ and ‘total absence of good or bad taste’. Geographically speaking, I was not ‘lost’. After finishing the School of Visual Arts in 1973 I was determined to work with the camera, a machine which I have never grown accustomed to. As a student I had been greatly impressed with the films of Michael Snow and by conceptual art-where photography played a supportive role to an idea. I was also beginning to consider ‘narrative’.
Tim Maul, NYC 11/09