"While finishing up the final photographs for my gun shy series over the past year, I began thinking about how the work was engaged by and informed through its connection to the landscape. Much of the work dealt with either the seasonal changes that occurred over the span of 5 years, or with what transpires upon the landscape via structures and long walks. I came across several abandoned duck blinds scattered around the various areas on the property I inhabit. While photographing them, I noticed – and subsequently gathered – the many spent shotgun shells that signaled its’ former (and sometimes current) use. At first, I simply wanted to collect them. I found their various colors, shapes and degrees of decay – curious as objects. The nests on the other hand, are not necessarily breed specific for me – I am more interested in where I found them – always in the late fall after leaves had fallen and nests were empty. There were found in rural Southern Maryland and urban parts of Asheville. I want to stress that while I have great respect for the birds (and the nests) – my interest wasn’t ornithological – but in finding things to photograph that would create interesting dialogues between the natural and the virtual, the organic and the digital. I also was interested in how color from the “natural” world would find relationships with found color in the “digital” world. I created a white box hood for a flatbed scanner and lay the actual shell directly on the glass. This gave me a high-resolution image, as well as the subsequent direct effects of the depth of field consequences of a film-based camera. I decided to print them in various sizes, and in doing so, found that the shell inhabited various guises, both anamorphic as well as prescribed. The shells seemed to absorb or reflect meaning depending on its scale, or the juxtaposition of another image hanging next to it. I liked this. Subsequently, when importing super 8 landscape footage into the computer in the late 1990s, then examining it (super 8 has 18 frames per second – and each roll has 3 minutes of footage), I noticed a corrupted frame amongst the hundreds I looked at. By corrupted frame, I mean a scrambled, abstracted image embedded and surrounded by more representational images. Most of the time this frame would be discarded. It would be seen as a malfunction of the software – a mistake. I saw this as an opportunity to synthesize some of my ideas on the process and materiality of how images are made – and subsequently imbued with meaning. This has led me to examine the object-ness of the medium. The influx of digital media – and the transfer of information via 1s and 0s – has transformed our understanding of what exactly constitutes the materiality and indeed, the concept of, a photograph. Is it the tools, the equipment, the paraphernalia such as cameras, film, paper, chemistry, hard drives, monitors, printers, running water and the like, or is it the unique occurrence of time and light in conjunction with the interaction and engagement with a subject? Indeed, are the tools and gadgets the true subject of photography, while what it represents just residue? It is in this spirit that I wanted the how to survive your own death series to be indicative of. "– Colby Caldwell 2016 BIOGRAPHY Colby Caldwell currently lives and works in Asheville, NC. He graduated from the Corcoran School of Art (now College of the Arts and Design at GW) in 1990. From 1997-­?2001, Caldwell taught in both the Fine Art and the Photography departments at the Corcoran. From 2002 – 2012, he was an Associate Professor of Art at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Caldwell has curated several shows including – Practice Makes Perfect , at DCAC, in Washington DC, Made History: Important Soviet WWII Photographs , at Boyden Gallery, St. Mary’s College, and Give and Take , at AAAC in Asheville, NC. His work has been shown both nationally and internationally since 1988. how to survive your own death , Caldwell’s most recent solo show, opened at HEMPHILL in January 2016. His previous two solo shows – gun shy and spent – opened concurrently at HEMPHILL and Civilian Art Projects in Washington, DC in March of 2012, and were reviewed in Art Forum, Huffington Post, The Washington Post , and other publications. Most recently, he has collaborated with James Huckenpahler and Matt Sargent on a multi-media interpretation of his work. Entitled “he who dreams of magic bullets…” , this interactive sound/visual piece was shown in Klaipeda, Lithuania in the spring of 2014 as part of a cultural exchange program highlighting American art in which he was asked to lecture on his work and the lasting legacy of Robert Frank and the Beat generation. Caldwell’s work is represented by HEMPHILL in Washington, DC, The Haen Gallery in Asheville, NC, and Atelier in Charleston, SC. He is featured in the book, 100 DC Artists, which was published in 2011. He is the director and co-founder of REVOLVE, an art/think space in Asheville, NC.