John Engelbrecht

A response to Francesca Abbate

JoshisaBird_pp.jpg

"Josh is a Bird"

I was taken with the first line of Fata Morgana, the Montaigne quote conveying the idea of one's memory being unfamiliar to oneself.  

I recently took a long drive out west, exploring some of the same areas I photographed on a similar long drive a decade ago. Now, back home, I have the same result as the former trip: a pile of 4x6 B&W images that document specific slices of time and skew, imprint, and contain my memory to a finite set of frames, a finite set of slices of time. I pretend and present myself as if I can find a trace of myself in these images, though I know this will not last. The image within the image is my son, Josh, running down a sloping trail, arms spread like wings, in western Colorado.

John Engelbrecht

John Engelbrecht is Director of the alternative arts venue Public Space One and an adjunct photography instructor at several institutions in the Iowa City area. He received his MFA from Iowa in 2009 and has shown his work nationally and internationally as well as been a strong advocate for homegrown art in eastern Iowa.