Pees On Earth is my first photographic monograph, an intimate travelogue and the start of a manifesto for the pursuit of life, freedom and immortality.
Back story...
It was the summer of 1998. I was 22 years old, at a rooftop in TriBeCa. By the time I left, I really had to pee. I had no patience to wait on line for the overused, overcrowded, and overrated bathroom. I walked out onto the street instead, and found an office desk thrown on the curbside. I squatted behind it and released what felt like, "ah, freedom!"
I pulled my pants back up and walked away from a stunt I wanted no one to have witnessed. I was thrilled, but I wasn't satisfied. I turned around to see what I'd left behind. The suspect puddle looked more like something from a murder scene than a drunken adventure. I captured it with my camera like a villain obsessively collecting the records of his crimes. With one snapshot, I claimed the anonymous puddle, and have reclaimed it again and again.
The intrigue of new locations and spaces gives me a reason to shoot pictures, and the act of peeing a means to reevaluate the spaces I find myself in—to make them my own. I can crouch over to see a landscape between my legs, vivid and untainted. The experience is a combination of secrecy, physicality, grace, and the prospect of unexpectedly getting caught. Most of all, it is one of sensational peace.
(From Pees On Earth)
More images will be uploaded soon!
Buy The Book
Pees On Earth, powerHouse Books 2006
www.powerhousebooks.com/peeparty.html
Hardcover, 11.25 x 7.25 inches, 112 pages, 82 four-color photographs
ISBN: 978-1-57687-317-5
$29.95
Please contact ellen directly for a signed copy or purchase at:
www.powerhousebooks.com
www.photoeye.com
www.amazon.com
www.strandbooks.com
