photo-eye | BLOG: In the Wake of the Bind – A New Series by David Trautrimas

A Reticent Crown, 2016 – © David Trautrimas

Ever since the release of Habitat Machines in 2008, Canadian photographer David Trautrimas has been preoccupied with the structure of home. While Habitat Machines is a coy and somewhat satirical ribbing of 20th Century consumer culture and hi-brow design movements, 2015's Eidolon Point uses the remains of dilapidated city neighborhoods as a sober reflection on mortality and corporeal decay. In his latest series, In the Wake of the Bind, Trautrimas goes one step further — using North American domestic ruins to explore the notion of an afterlife. photo-eye Gallery is proud to release the eight image series In the Wake of the Bind today, and reached out to the artist for his thoughts on the project, as well as its connection to his previous work.

When the Place You Know Isn't the Place You Know, 2016 – © David Trautrimas

"Both of my most recent series series, Eidolon Point and In the Wake of the Bind, contemplate mortality as expressed through architectural decay. Whereas Eidolon Point is concerned with transitional moments between the here and hereafter, In the Wake of the Bind presents architecture completely post mortem. A fundamental difference between the two series is found in the expression of a foundation. Most of the works of Eidolon Point have either built footing or color field to ground the work in the physical realm, where the structures of In The Wake of the Bind are completely untethered, floating in a white void. If death may be expressed as uselessness, the most useless state of architecture is to be animated, with a free will to move from foundation and place. Imbued with a sense of self awareness, these structural entities are able to keep vigil over the passing of their initial forms. In an inversion of human death, sentience is a state achieved only in the afterlife.

Phantom Limb, 2016 – © David Trautrimas

After I completed the Eidolon Point, I felt that the source material, about 15,000 photos I took of
architectural ruins around North America, may prove to be fertile grounds for another body of work. With that hunch in mind I decided to revisit the original raw file photos and spent many months pulling out architectural details that I had dismissed or outright missed in the first round of editing. Through this process I found myself with a library of hundreds of individual architectural details that I recombined into new assemblages for In the Wake of the Bind.

I’ve engaged with many kinds of architectural forms in my practice, but residential buildings are the only ones I’ve been compelled to revisit. The first series of housing structures I produced was Habitat Machines, a collection of abandoned retro-futurist buildings fashioned from photographs of mid modern appliances. They were bit of a tongue-in-cheek poke at the failure of modernism, with each building a cool, isolated figure positioned in a stark urban landscape. After completing Habitat Machines I was left with a desire to revisit the structure of home, not through the intermediary of photographing objects in studio, but by photographing pre-existing architecture. It wasn’t until many years later, while spending time in Detroit, that I had the inspiration to do so revealed.

I found that aspects of the houses I photographed in Detroit, a collapsed roof, crumbled brick, slanted window sill, hinted at personification of the human spirit. Through the editing process I was able to assemble these emotive fragments into a whole, culminating in structures able to convey feelings of desire, heartbreak, stoicism, confusion, etc.

Pouring Your Heart Out, 2016 – © David Trautrimas

While creating the works of In The Wake of The Bind, a metaphysical corollary would regularly come into my conscious thoughts — what the soul is to a body the body is to a house. This thought, found in the core of all the works in the series, I find is best expressed in Pouring Your Heart Out. Such an act is often a fraught affair, short on logic and often leaving one feeling spent. In the composition the conflicting roof lines eventually cascade into each other, channeling the gaze down the thin legs and eventually flowing your gaze out the bottom of the composition. If you care to return, there’s a clear space in the middle, room to catch a deep breath and marvel at the precarious, yet stoic, home of the heart."

— David Trautrimas

In the Wake of the Bind is a suite of eight images produced as Archival Pigment Prints 34x34" in size. Prints are available in very limited editions of 3, and prices begin at $1800.

View the Online Portfolio

Social Media

In the Wake of the Bind – A New Series by David Trautrimas