Description

Left Alone by Archie Shepp (1978) is one of the most beautiful pieces of instrumental music I know. A saxophone, accompanied by a piano, plays notes that resonate with my heart. In my mind, this photograph moves with an impossible slowness to an undefinable silence between notes in jazz riff. The duality in this Aria, Left Alone, is nihilism and conflagration. I posed the model and the fabric in the Japanese character for fire. She models the pose of power in the fluidity of dance. A flame, alone is a powerful and fragile life force that is on the brink of greatness, and the precipice of darkness; life extinguished. The red is her power extending from heart center and the white is the searing flame.