This Man is Drilling a Well
Terry A. Ratzlaff
108 pgs
Full Color/Cyanotype Accordion Structure
L9" x W12" x H.75"
First Edition of 50 + 5 Special (coming soon) + 2 AP
Printed in Lincoln and Howells, Nebraska.
©Terry A. Ratzlaff
www.terryaratzlaff.com
www.basementwindowbooks.com
Published in The Basement Window
August 2023
ISBN : 979-8-3507-1527-9
Drawing on the parallels between dreaming and collecting, This Man is Drilling a Well is sourced from a single drawer found in horologist Greg Arp’s clock shop. The book tumbles illogically through a constellation of fragmented images that reflect a junk drawer, a fold in spacetime where all ephemera accumulate in disorder: schematics, patterns, magazine pages, furniture ads, wood grain samples, paper, paperclips, wood scraps, photographs, letters, and various odds and ends. The ephemera––collected for forty years––recollects a modern narrative of movement, construction, and fragmentation, where the refutation of obsolescence resists the authority of time; everything is recycled, reused, and reappropriated for a renewed life.
Made in collaboration with Greg, This Man is Drilling a Well was conceptualized as a tangential collection of images connected to the larger context of The Marches: a photographic labyrinth of time, memory, and absence. The work aims, in part, to better understand how humans attempt to construct and control the experience of time while carving out the infinite depths of Arp Clock and Wood Shop.
