Charles Grogg says that the title of his portfolio, After Ascension and Descent,” is taken from a phrase by Pierre Joris in A Nomad Poetics in which he calls for an approach to writing that accounts for what Gilles Deleuze refers to as “rhizomatic,” allowing for varieties of discourse, idioms, syntax, even languages.


Charles Grogg, Sudden & Unexpected, gelatin silver print from 'After Ascension and Descent'.

Grogg adds:

I gave the work this title because I am at a loss when it comes to speaking of knowing one’s roots. My family, with its adopted members, silence about its past, reverence for the absolute at the expense of the profane, has taught me to speak one language only. To be monolingual is to be foreshortened, and like so many Americans I know I speak a provincial, not a global, language. The advent of “wireless” living does nothing to allay this. If anything, we are almost hopelessly tethered—to each other, to the world. It’s when we forget this, when we think we are free beyond complicity, that we encounter trouble looking for meaning.

More drastically this selection of images is produced as gelatin silver prints, toned in selenium, then painted with mud in alkyd, smeared with dirt and compost in encaustic, pierced with copper wire or sewn.

I find the idea of allowing for varieties of discourse, idioms, syntax, even languages in photography to be very appealing. I concur with Joris that the days of static—form, content, state—are over and that anything not involved in continuous transformation hardens and dies. This suggests to me a photography that is ongoing & open-ended.