1997
photograph
Courtesy of the artist
This one was in Teller, Alaska, in October 1997. Teller is on the Bering Strait, about 70 miles north of Nome. I was up there with the French anthropologist and geomorphologist Jean Malaurie, who'd asked me to help on a project. That's me, my shadow actually, between the dead seal and one of the mushing dogs belonging to the hunter who caught it. The hunter was sleeping in that shed with the open door behind the dog at that moment. What I liked about my shadows in Nome was they were always long and thin, neither of which I was: I've never been tall and I weighted about 70 pounds more then than I do now. . The sun that time of year up there is always very low in the sky, making for long narrow shadows.So I took a lot of pictures of me tall and skinny in shadow. I took them on the tundra, on the streets of Nome, on the rocks of the seawall in Nome's harbor, and in Teller.