DEEP END
Deep End is a photographic exploration of an abandoned swimming pool’s topography.
The installation consists of 122 archival inkjet photographs that fit together to re-create one corner of the pool’s deep end. By systematically mapping its eroded surface, I have approached the pool as the new terrain of an uncharted land.
My three-dimensional 1-to-1 reproduction of the abandoned pool is turned upside down in the installation, bringing the floor of the pool overhead. A bright blue hole in the ground becomes an enclosure, a huge unfolded map tacked to the wall and ceiling, and a suggested sky
The abandoned swimming pool I reproduce for my installation, Deep End is over fifty years old and was repaired season after season. As it has decayed, the layers of maintenance reveal various shades of blue, patches of cement, and bulging seams of tar. Each photographic panel is a modernist composition of decomposition.
The unnatural blue walls evoke the pool’s origins as a clean, blank, chlorinated space. It was an underwater playground for generations of summer frolickers, a Hollywood blue screen against which countless fantasies were played out. My installation honors the spirit of pretend adventure, situated within the pool’s present state of decay.
