This series is inspired by the following lines from the American objectivist
poet George Oppen, "The self is no mystery, the mystery is / That there
is something for us to stand on" (from the poem "World, World--"). In
other words, the real mystery of our existence is grounded in the fact, in
the wonder, that there is existence at all. This series of images is, in part,
a reflection on such questions of ontology as experienced in and through
the landscape by an individual.
Nathan Wirth, a native San Franciscan, is a self taught photographer who uses a variety of techniques— including long exposure, infrared and intentional camera movement— to express his unending wonder of the fundamental fact of existence by attempting to focus on the silence that we can sometimes perceive in between the incessant waves of sound that often dominate our perceptions of the world. Wirth, who earned both his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in English Literature from San Francisco State University, brings a deep appreciation of poetry to his explorations of place (especially the sea). Poets such as George Oppen, Seamus Heaney, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, James Schuyler, Lorine Niedecker, and George Mackay Brown have played a fundamental role in shaping his attention to the things and places that he photographs. Often returning to the same locations many times, Wirth seeks to explore the silence and the sublimity of those places.
Wirth makes his living teaching English Composition at City College of San Francisco.
