Marget Long looks to the vibrant, queer potential of mirages through a series of interconnected artworks:
mirages as the subject of photographs [(Inferior) Mirages]; mirages seen ‘live' in the landscape[Mirage Viewing Station]; mirages used as a ploy to fund an major arctic expedition in 1913 [Crocker Land]; and mirages as hallucinogenic landscapes depicted in films and popular cultural texts[You Were Drifting].
A mirage is an image that refuses to be taken. It flickers, withdraws, and vanishes—an optical event that insists on distance and on the impossibility of ownership. In a world where every surface is a screen and every gesture an act of capture, the mirage offers a counter-image: ephemeral, unstable, unprofitable. Mirages teach us that images—and lives—can exist outside networked capitalism. They can remain uncaptured, unprofitable, untracked. In their refusal to be taken, mirages point to other ways of seeing and being. The Remains of a Bank in Metropolis, Nevada, Inkject Print on Moab, 20 x 16 inches, 2014.
PHOTOHOUSE37 Commercial photography for non-profit organizations.