CONTEMPORARY EXPLORER

  There is a quiet media revolution in advertising going on. Rooted in finding alternatives to the “super flat media viewing age.” One noted example of this is advertisers increasingly using split screens. Often one side is playing a sporting event and the other the advertisers message. On the surface not related to each other. The technical name for this form of presentation is the Diptych. Some actually feel it’s annoying, but there is mental magic at work here. Diptychs have their roots in art presentations that date back to medieval times. Painters would create different religious scenes on wood panels and then link them together. When both sides of Diptych are taken together, they illuminate different perspectives. The viewer is left wondering what the common elements are. Today’s marketing goal is to get people to pause, to think, to absorb the message fully. And most of all remember it. Banksy the street artist often uses Diptychs, perhaps the most famous one the girl reachi...

The Great Pee Dee River country of the Carolinas runs from the Appalachian Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean. Small towns dot it banks and byways. The country is deep in history, lure and wildness..  To the west is the Sand Hills full of wildlife and swamps, conjuring up thoughts of a Jurassic world. It is the river though that defines the country. My camera never seems to get its fill of wandering here. There is much revolutionary war and times of slavery written in this land and towns. Slaves were transported on the river north, sold and left. Sherman laid much of the area to waste in his march south in the late 1700’s. You can almost hear the voices of the past if you stop and listen. Sometimes they’re in the wind or the still moments of a Southern Summer. You stumble onto sites like Long House Building in Darlington SC. Only a small brass plate on the corner revealing its name. You search and search for the history of the place. Like many sites here, the history has been lost wit...