Charles Lindsay’s World
Recipes for the Mind
Charles Lindsay’s career is anything but traditional. His work ranges from exploration geology in the Arctic to photojournalism in Southeast Asia. He is a multidisciplinary artist interested in both technology and ecosystems. Lindsay embraces the digital revolution and combines his love of science and art to tell us who and where we are as a society.
In 2010, the photographer received a Guggenheim fellowship for his carbon based imaging process that synthesizes photography and drawing. In other words, a camera-less technique. Recipes for the Mind is Lindsay’s newest book of photographs from his past, present and imagined future. The 108 photographs are accompanied with poetic texts as he reflects on art, technology, consumption, near death experiences, failure and courage.
Lindsay, through images and verse shares a deep-rooted, personal reflection:
first food memory
tv dinner
aluminum pan
fried chicken mashed potatoes
an Eggleston photo
but not that
the first memory
that I remember
Mom crying
JFK dead
on tv
I was 2
nothing to fear
but fear itself
The images and words reveal his thoughts about people, nature and machinery with food serving as a tasty metaphor. The photos date back to 1984 and were taken throughout the Canadian Arctic, Asia, Europe, South America and the United States. Artist Fred Tomaselli explains, “Charles Lindsay’s hybrid practice stirs a lifetime of images, words, experiences and chemistry into a slurry of glitchy, trippy beauty…where text and image actively swap each other’s DNA, creating a variety of strange forms and slippery new meanings.” For the viewer, the distorted and manual bending of the original images evoke a feeling of time passed.
“Much of my work as an artist has become technically complicated, site specific, expensive to produce and yet amorphous,” explains Lindsay. “Recipes for the Mind is a return to words, photographs, and a book: things that can be realized immediately and enjoyed almost anywhere.”
Recipes for the Mind is available now. A podcast and a lecture series is gearing up.
