Eugene Lee
The first piece is a photographic and digital art piece titled "Red, Black, and Blue". The subject is a common sight on the streets of my home of New York City as well as just about any other populous area in the U.S., a stick figure used to signify a pedestrian area, though in this case, with a footprint. This one, as almost every other one is painted white. By digitally "painting" it black I wanted to turn this commonplace emblem on its head as a narrative of blackness in this country. On one hand, the image serves as a exposition all too familiar with black men and women in America; that of being chased and haunted by a specter, depicted here as nebulous but overbearing and threatening hazes of red, white, and blue along with fractions of stars of the same colors made to resemble something sharp and menacing. The colors may evoke several ideas but in this context turns them on their head: the patriotic colors celebrated by an America that historically and continuously attempts to dehumanize minorities while seemingly oblivious to the bodies and minds that so much of the black and brown people it owes so much of its collective industry and culture to, the colors associated with police light upheld by white complicity, even red and blue as colors associated with blood, spilled by countless ancestors - all of this yet as depicted here one gets the sense that the subject persists doggedly forward rather than runs from the spangled ghost, trying to dismiss the hounding entity rather than fleeing from it. And yet on the other hand, more than a narrative of being black in America, to me this piece is an accusatory finger at each white and European American viewer responsible for this ongoing injustice. The 2-dimensionality of the image represents a kind of flattening upon black and brown individuals and personalities incurred by white Americans who have mentally corralled them into stereotyped "ethnic" groups. The white boot print contrasting upon the black body of the subject should have a particularly blunt and ugly connotation to the viewer. But my hope is that by using a subject so familiar and common as to be approachable people who are usually so averse to coming face-to-face with this type of subject matter might be subversively drawn in by its simplicity, and that its seeming innocuousness might disarm the viewer into having an honest account without diluting the message, especially in this special time where a greater number of American minds of all backgrounds seem to be more receptive to it.
The second piece is a photograph titled "Grounded" taken at a fruit farm in New Jersey. At face value it's a straightforward documentation of these unfortunate times, heavily tinged with an innocent nostalgia for a missing "normal" time perhaps taken for granted. However, there are allusions to what in my view has been a childlike response, a tantrum of sorts, by an alarming number of Americans to what has simply been a lousy situation. That the phrase on the sign "Playground Closed Due to Covid" would speak so broadly and aptly as a metaphor to the adult experience in this country seems a half-humorous half-sobering insight into our American psyche which has been exposed to by this (albeit very serious) wrench thrown into the routine.
Hello, I'm E.E. Norris (given name Eugene Lee). I am a creative photographer, digital artist, creator/editor of Ecce! Magazine, as well as host of the No Good Answers podcast. Having grown up in Savannah, Georgia I have now resided in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City for the last 17 years. As with other artists in their respective mediums, in photography I found a language with which I could express thoughts and ideas that my words could not, and with this language I was able to find new directions and dimensions with which to explore truth. This exploration drives and is the foundation of most of my work. Preceding these days as a photographer, I played poker professionally for 12 years, and before that studied psychology at the University of Georgia.
