the very modality of longing: it is the voyage home that never reaches its desti-
nation, the intimate approach that will never end.
Notes
. Lockhart, cited in Inés Katzenstein,“Sharon Lockhart, Ethnography Home,”Pine
Flat(Bilbao: Sala Rekalde,), p.:“For this project, I wanted to look at some-
thing that felt very familiar to me. I immediately felt connected to the landscape and
the people of Pine Flat. It is very similar to the places I grew up.”It bears remarking
that it is unclear whether Pine Flat is the actual name of the place to which Lockhart
retreated, who, in other statements, has intimated that she will keep the site’s true
identity a secret.
. This opposition is particular to Disfarmer’s name as well, which was not his given
one (he was born Michael Meyers), and expressed an extreme dis-identification with
his rural Arkansas origins (which were also paradoxical, inasmuch as he was born
into a family of German immigrants). We may wonder if Lockhart was attracted to
Disfarmer’s not-widely-known work precisely because of this dis-identification
staged around the opposition between his rural subjects and industrial photogra-
phy–we may wonder, in other words, if Lockhart was attracted to this opposition
precisely because of a need to overcome it (as now, today, both are outmoded).
. Timothy Martin,“Documentary Theater,”Sharon Lockhart: Teatro Amazonas(Rotter-
dam: Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen,), pp.-.
. The“Orphic”dimension of this turn away from the camera, which I am reading as a
turning“back”to the past, could be stressed. It is one of the founding metaphors of
Silverman’s forthcoming study of analogy,Flesh of My Flesh; see especially her chap-
ter“Orpheus Rex”and her study of similar poses in the chapter on Gerhard Richter,
“How to Paint History.”
. There is little“proof”that Lockhart sees herUntitled Studyseries as intimately con-
nected to thePine Flatproject; rarely seen or reproduced, as if they were in fact
“private,”theUntitled Studyworks are just as rarely discussed, and the artist has
not commented on any such relation. However, it is suggestive that the largest
grouping of the re-photographed snapshots that to my knowledge have ever been
reproduced appear at the back of the recent catalogueSharon Lockhart: Pine Flat(Mi-
lan: Charta,), along with the re-photographed commercial portraits of Lock-
hart herself, and a sampling of other early images like theUntitledworks of
and.
. Which I am obviously translating thus: to“pine”or to long for in the language of
the“flat,”the objective, the distanced.
. Allen also recorded all the sound for the filmPine Flat. Here is another form, we
might imagine, of attunement: the intense collaboration between two female artists,
one working in the realm of the visual, and the other in the realm of music. Attune-
ment, in other words, is also a way in which we can begin to understand Lockhart’s
constant impulse toward collaboration in all of her projects.
134 George Baker