You Must Change Your Life

A poetic opening in which to phase in and out of time...

You Must Change Your Life 
Archival photographs. 2022-ongoing 

The Czech poet Ranier Maria Rilke writes in the final lines of Archaic Torso of Apollo, “for here there is no place that does not see you./ You must change your life.” Rilke found in his encounter with a stone sculpture of an ancient god an exchange of ‘seeing’ across time that led to the flash of realization - you must change your life. What could this mean? Rilke seems to suggest that meeting this object, outside of his own time, leads to another function of temporality - a change in life, a change in phase. This moment of phasing through temporality, where seeing leads to being seen, and being seen leads to the possibility of a shift in Being, serves as the central metaphor in my photographic project that borrows its title from Rilke. These pictures were made simply, as I walked through the southeastern United States, primarily Florida and Georgia. The photographs in this series are observational, describing both their subjects and the photographer suspended in a world permeated by and visually shaped by capital, itself a function of time. In staging these encounters with objects and situations, I hope to create a kind of poetic opening - a space for the viewer to find themselves phasing in and out of time, considering their relation to seeing time, and being seen. 

- Wes Kline

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Wes Kline is an artist and musician. He has taught photography and film at New College of Florida, New Mexico State University, the University of Florida, and at St. Lawrence University. He earned his MFA in Studio Art from the University of Illinois, Chicago in 2005. His research and work looks at time, ecology, language and performance, often in relation to experimental documentary. He has shown his work nationally and internationally and teaches courses in photography and extended media, including video, installation and sound.

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