Justin Kirchhoff, 1985 Main St. Middletown Connecticut, 1/9, 2023, Archival Inkjet Print, 31 x 23 inches

Justin Kirchoff is an artist whose work explores the built landscape, personal identity, and the material and emotional resonance of the photographic print. He received his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and his MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art. He has taught at the Maine College of Art and Design since 1998.

Under Bare Poles is the third and most comprehensive body of work in an unplanned trilogy, preceded by Inherit Traits followed by Half-Life. This most recent body of work emerges from the death of my parents and the subsequent process of sorting through what remains after life. These circumstances become both subject and catalyst, creating a visual and emotional foil to images of my daughter, who is beginning to navigate adulthood.

While the work is grounded in mourning, death, and loss, it expands beyond my family and their objects to include landscape imagery. These landscapes function as an emotional barometer: photographs made in transit, during visits, hospital trips, and the eventual hospice experience. They reference the passage of time and a shifting psychological state of grief.

Ignoring my self consciousness of yet another artist’s body of work centered on loss. I embrace a compulsion to respond to a lifetime of accumulation, to my parents’ obsessive collecting, and to the lingering presence and burden of their choices. Through this process, I attempt to understand their histories, their secrets, and their influence.