Totem Series - Artist Statement – Larry Cwik

After more than 15 years of working not only in single image photography, but also in Super 8 film, I visited and was profoundly inspired by the beauty and power of the Totem Poles of the peoples of the Pacific Northwest coast.  These poles use visual images to illustrate stories and myths, sometimes using metaphors.  These poles inspired me to begin arranging my photographic images in a vertical stacked manner to transmit my vision of a story, myth, or belief. Some use symbols or archetypes.  The resulting Totem Series pieces remain untitled; they are numbered.  The arrangement is intuitive, having arrived from my subconscious like the individual images themselves.   I like it when there is mystery and thought provoked in a work.   In 2008, I visited Alert Bay, on Cormorant Island, off the northern coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, a major center of Totem Pole building, to do research for this series.

Larry Cwik