Ion's blog

Much has been written about Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison, the husband and wife team whose photographic tableaus took the art world by storm more than six years ago. Creating a genre unique within the photo world, the ParkeHarrisons construct fantasies in the guise of environmental performances for their Everyman – a man dressed in a black suit and starched white shirt – who interacts with the earths landscape. Tapping into their surreal imagination, the artists combine elaborate sets (which can take up to – months to construct) and an impeccable sense of wit and irony, to address issues about the earth and mankind’s responsibility to heal the damage he has done to its landscape.

Consistently dressed in a his trademark outfit, this Everyman is earth’s protector, healer and communicator, using low-tech implements as his aid. This Everyman then takes shape as fabricated props for theatrical performances, which are staged to be photographed. Like a production reserved for the cinema, the ParkeHarrison invent their settings, which tend to look more like scenes from Metropolis or Blade Runner rather than the family photo album.

In their most well-known works, the artists built oversized objects to perform improbable acts: a huge needle repairs the cracks in the earth’s surface (Mending the Earth); a gear and propeller flying apparatus carries a man over the land so he can feed it (The Sower). In Reclamation– one of five new gravures on view – we see the suited man dragging the earth as if it were a blanket, providing a new layer for its continued existence. In Burn Season, Everyman comes upon a field of flames wearing a suite of water balloons, ready to save it from extinction. In Rain Dance,we see Everyman multiplied by four, each one carrying a branch, forming a human Stonehenge, empty water jugs on the ground ready to rescue the impending storm.