“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust

The places and names that make up our memory are but collections of photographs taken by the mind’s eye- they are a heap of fragmented images that mature with the perceptual filter through which they are understood.

Memory and perception play an integral role in the practice of Los Angeles based photographer Michael Salvatore Tierney, whose current Aerospace series is inspired by fleeting visions from his childhood which are only now becoming realized in his adulthood.  In 1978 Tierney’s father accepted a job in aerospace, uprooting his family from their home in New York to the South Bay of Southern California.  At an early age aerospace become a core part of Tierney’s existence as it was wrapped in a shroud of mystery.  The jobs of his parents were only further abstracted by the top-secret aspect and government clearance that were required to gain entry to the air force bases.  Like many other families in the South Bay, aerospace was a part of life no matter how elusive it seemed.

Terminal 3, LAX is part of the previous series Incidence and Reflection: Municipal Architecture in Los Angeles, and holds particular meaning for Tierney, as it was one of the tunnels that he came through when he moved to Los Angeles.  “I thought it was really fitting that we were on this journey,” he recalls “and this tunnel is sort of this portal.”  The photograph depicts a sterile and vacant terminal whose only signs of life are the automated escalators at the far end of the ominous hallway and sparkling linoleum floors reflecting the white fluorescent lights like rubber.  Terminal 3, LAX speaks to Tierney’s desire to channel memory through his photographs and points to the process of what he calls “deconstructing” the photographs, which, mirrors the perceptual process achieving, and then losing clarity.   Tierney expresses his desire to “deconstruct the images because memories are so fuzzy and they deconstruct in your mind and you rebuild them, and you end up with just little fragments of thing you remember.”

The Aerospace project began accidentally (or perhaps subconsciously), when Tierney started photographing outside the main gate of Edwards Air Force Base, near a bombing range.  Military police immediately confiscated his film and issued him a citation, which made Tierney realize that the project depended on his collaboration with the air force bases. “I realized there were no stolen moments,” he explains and the only way to gain access to the bases was through direct communication.  Over a year went by before he was granted access into Edwards.  Working only with air force bases in Southern California, Tierney has collaborated with Edwards Air Force Base, NASA Dryden Research Center, JPL, and Caltech Graduate Air Force Center.  His time with NASA lead him to their latest project called the SOFIA, an acronym for Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy is a highly modified Boeing 747SP that incorporates a high-tech computer-controlled infrared telescope.  The telescope cavity is located at the rear fuselage and can photograph the universe outside of the Earth without any obstruction. Although Tierney still eagerly awaits an invitation to fly in the SOFIA, he has already been granted access inside the plane and documented its sci-fi interiors that were not yet completed.  Perhaps new images of the SOFIA will be ready in time for the Aerospace exhibition at Blythe Projects in Culver City, California scheduled for January/February 2011.

Photographing with a 21-mega pixel Canon digital camera using an extremely shallow depth of field, Tierney captures the life support systems, jet-powered ejector seats, machine shops, and the drawing board to illustrate a project from its inception to completion.  Each air force base seems to have its own aesthetic of cool blues, muted yellows, and pulsating reds.  There is an absence of people in the photographs as the objects assume their own vivid identity.  The sterility of the empty chairs in the NASA control room, the vacant space suit and helmet bolstered by green painters tape, and the absence of any pilot operating the planes was a calculated choice by Tierney because Aerospace is not meant to be a strict documentation of a “system or power structure or an object,” rather the objects are a catalyst for creating images that are charged with memory and awe-inspiring moment of looking into the future.