Garden of Selves

Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison are incredible image-makers whose playful images tell a wonderful story of life after what we now know occurs. Thier images are full of wonderfully dreamlike characters that live in a world that resembles ours, but tends to shift towards the fantasy and dream world. They each tell a different chapter of the story. The elaborate constructions draw us in… to this made up world full of hope and devastation, reality and fantasy, peace and conflict.

This is ParkeHarrison’s image, Garden of Selves. An image where a man dressed in a common black suit with a starched white dress shirt awakens out of an open box to his astonishment, surrounded by a sea of boxes containing what seems to be exact replicas of himself, all in a state of slumber, all ready in a sense to have the same experience only at a later time.

Will each of these selves in the garden be the same person, with the same aspirations, the same goals, the same personalities and experiences, or is each one differently conformed into their own unique individual by their separate experiences which seem to be only different by the time separating their awakenings? Is our life, personality, and character traits, controlled solely by our genetic makeup… by a code, a predetermined blueprint…or is it our surroundings, our family, our experiences and time that control who we ultimately are? One hopes for the latter… that we can each create our own destiny, our own person… to do and think and create as we choose…

This image also offers a great juxtaposition between that being contained verses that being freed… the numbers and numbers of men being contained and restrained, hidden in a way from the reality of what lies outside of their box… sheltered form the truth, unaffected by the devastation surrounding their pod-like containers. This is contradicted with the lone man stepping out. It’s as if he has awoken from years of slumber, years of veiled knowledge, and in a moment, he has become enlightened to the world, to this garden of others, others that resemble himself… It’s as if he’s eaten the fruit, or taken the red pill, and been enlightened to a knowledge that he wishes he could forget, a knowledge with a devastating truth full of questions…who are these others? Why have they not been released? Will they receive enlightenment? When? Questions that could only be answered by time… only to be asked by the next in line…