Waiting and Watching
By Steve Bennett | March 27, 2021
In my lens-based composite, “Jailhouse Quartet,” which I created in 2019, the grid is part of the rusted steel strap lattice that makes up the walls of the outdoor Kelso Depot Jail in the Mojave Preserve (the jail was used from the mid-1940s to 1985 to detain inebriated folks). The two-cell jail sits next to a major rail line and the four windows in the artwork—spaces in the lattice—reveal a blur of the passing trains.
I find the artwork to be an apt metaphor for a year of being held captive by the virus, a year of waiting and watching the world as we know it transform at warp speed.
Steve Bennett, Jailhouse Quartet, Composite photo, 2019
Copyright © 2021 Steven Bennett
Steve Bennett is a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based visual artist. He began taking photographs more than 40 years ago, in the age of film, and transitioned to digital photography in the late 90s. Today, in addition to taking and making traditional street, macro, and landscape photographs, he creates photo-based abstract composites designed to take viewers on fanciful flights of the imagination through virtual realms. His work has been displayed in numerous juried exhibitions, and at Google’s Kendall Square, Cambridge offices as well as various technology, biotech, and financial service companies in the Boston area.