Absolution

In my senior year of college, I got an email from my thesis advisor asking me if I wanted to help author Jeff VanderMeer with research for the surprise fourth book in the Southern Reach trilogy. Of course, I said yes.

I spent the next few months working as Jeff’s research assistant on top of my duties as a student. I traveled across the Florida community I grew up in as I photographed jarred marine specimens at a roadside aquarium and documented sea wrack on the Forgotten Coast. Alone with a camera on the same beaches my mother took me to as a child, I snapped photos of washed up tin cans and webs of seaweed with bird skulls.

My research contributions included compiling monthly reports on sea wrack along the Forgotten Coast, as well as information on biohazard facilities, MKUltra, psychopathy, darkrooms, and cultural and historical sites in North Florida. My photographs are included as interior book art separating the three sections of the novel.

I also wrote the new translations of the Franz Schubert song cycle Winter Journey which appear in Part II of the novel, along with psyop variations and alligator versions of the songs.

You can read more about this project in our article for BOMB Magazine, “Jeff VanderMeer by Andy Marlowe: When research becomes art: from alligator lyrics to hidden histories.”

Here I am taking photographs for Absolution promotion,
image courtesy of Jeff VanderMeer