Marshall Scheider (1991) is a photographer currently based in Portland, Oregon.
His series, By the Way of the Blackbird, chronicles a year in which the artist left his home state of Oregon and relocated to New York City. By combining elements of personal narrative, candid document, and poetic visual revelry, Scheider has created a complex body of work that channels the unrest of movement and the frenetic energy of city life. The personal experience of alienation and aloneness creates an emotional framework for the series, evidenced in the averted glances of passing strangers, deserted parking lots, and a vacant storefront that proclaims simply, “we are moving.”
The narrative is pushed further with bizarre imagery of a cluttered fish tank, a dirty bathroom sink, and an ashtray full of shells on a satin bedspread. These images highlight the strangeness and lack of cohesion in the modern world: a world in which detachment has become the norm. The pain of isolation in an austere environment is balanced by redemptive depictions of the beauty of light, detail, and form.
Dramatic shadows cast across a deserted high-rise facade or corrugated metal; birds alighting in the sun beside a puddle; a discarded plastic bag illuminated like a paper lantern – all these serve as reminders of the consolation found through the experience of beauty: reminders that do not efface the pain, but serve to make it worth bearing.
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