© 2010 Ben Shipley 1

Knife Thrower

Way back in 2005, I shot a series exploring…well… Americana in a sense.  It focused on images describing a narrative I developed about a carnivalesque knife-throwing act; but it was ultimately more of a study on archetypal personae and imagery from the history of cinema and American style than anything else.  In addition to a preoccupation with storytelling, I have a fascination with the attempt to illustrate something resembling imagery culled from people’s sense of the past–as if telling a story from the perspective of the viewer, instead of myself.

I’m working on scanning the negatives and producing a short run of the images for a show in July at Common Ground Cafe in Baltimore.  Stay tuned for more details.  Here is the first image from the series.