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© Michael W Hicks

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Michael W Hicks

Syracuse, New York

Artist Statement

My work is about loneliness, isolation, uncertainty, and the loss of purpose. I consider myself a casting director and a location scout, a writer and director. In creating a world, I seek out people and places that evoke an uncanny normalcy, of something that feels both real and manufactured, both of this world and set apart from it. The places I photograph are treated like theatrical sets, and the people I photograph are characters. Actors, models and artificial lighting are brought together to create a psychologically charged space between document, fiction and performance.

The subjects of my photographs are characters that I have cast as working people – hotel clerks, salespeople, actors and actresses, bartenders, police detectives. They move through a manufactured landscape, playing their prescribed roles, existing in suspended moments of tension that never resolve, aware that death lies at the end of every road. The action is happening just out of frame, much like death, standing right at the edge of what we can comprehend.

© Michael W Hicks

Michael W Hicks's Portfolio

Building at Night, 2017, Archival Pigment Print, 16x20
Detective, 2017, Archival Pigment Print, 16x20
Funeral Home, 2016, Archival Pigment Print, 20x24
Saw Something, 2017, Archival Pigment Print, 16x20
Lounge Singer, 2017, Archival Pigment Print, 16x20
Puzzle, 2017, Archival Pigment Print, 16x20
Hotel Clerk, 2017, Archival Pigment Print, 20x24
Gurney, 2016, Archival Pigment Print, 20x24
Business Man, 2017, Archival Pigment Print, 16x20
Dropped Briefcase, 2016, Archival Pigment Print, 16x20
Wedding Guests, 2016, Archival Pigment Print, 20x24
Swans, 2017, Archival Pigment Print, 16x20
The Silver Screen, 2017, Archival Pigment Print, 16x20
Cloud Factory, 2016, Archival Pigment Print, 20x24
Installation View, 2018

© Michael W Hicks

Artist Biography

Michael Hicks was born in Middletown, NJ. He works with photography, video and film, exploring cinematic modes of presentation that play with the viewer’s sense of time and place. He received his MFA in Art Photography from Syracuse University, where he also teaches photography. Major exhibitions include shows at the Haubrok Foundation in Berlin, Germany, at Lightwork in Syracuse, NY and at the Atlanta Photography Group in Atlanta, GA.

www.michaelwhicks.com

@michael.w.hicks

© Michael W Hicks

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