C. E. Fitzgerald

It started with the mesquite trees in my neighborhood. The city planted mesquites as an attempt to reintroduce native species into the urban landscape. These trees stain the streets with their viscous sap and have grown in a twisting unpredictable manner. They obstruct the sidewalks, forcing pedestrians to duck down or lean to the side, in a dance of negotiation with my woody neighbors. The trees confront people with their wildness, but they have been planted in shallow holes, between hard layers of cement and asphalt, that prevent their roots from growing deep enough to anchor them firmly into the earth. This makes them vulnerable to the violent summer thunderstorms that have, with increasing regularity, begun ripping through my neighborhood and knocking the trees to the ground.

I have a strong desire to photograph the trees in my neighborhood and interact with them as partners in an ongoing performance. What started as documentation has evolved into something stranger. I am overlaying hair onto black-and-white negatives of mesquites trees. I am also making self-portraits. I scurry up trunks in my underwear and hang off of branches, a full-grown man still playing in the trees.

During the beginning of the pandemic, I started making self-portraits in my studio. I didn’t have anywhere to go and no one was available to sit for me. So I put my camera on a tripod, with a self-timer, disrobed and stepped in front of the lens. I worked in the basement or outside (away from the dog walkers and passing cars). I initially thought of these awkward pictures as something to keep me occupied, in the meantime, while I was waiting for the world to open back up.

In Waiting for Godot, the characters Valdimir and Estragon kill time while they wait for something important to happen – the arrival of Godot. As the play progresses, it becomes clear that Godot isn’t going to show up. The substance of the play is what the characters do in the interim. This story strikes a chord deep inside me. I have often felt dissatisfied with my situation in life, waiting for something in the future that will be better than my current set of circumstances.

I am reconsidering the photographs that I made while waiting out the pandemic, in the unfinished spaces in and around my studio. Maybe these pictures aren’t just artwork that I was making in the interim; maybe they are worthy of further consideration; maybe they are the stuff of life itself.