Come Sit With Me

This project was sparked in 1990 when in a NJ cemetery I came upon a full sized stone recliner used as a headstone. The inscription, Come Sit With Me,has stuck in my mind all these years and influenced my obsession with chairs and other forms of seating placed deliberately or carelessly in the environment.

Waiting Roon,(Pier 5) Cheung Chau, Hong Kong

Serving as an example of the importance of function over form, an uncomfortable chair can find itself stuck in a corner, left behind in a move and often left outside to the elements. I am intrigued by who once sat on this seat. I make up stories about them yet remain unconcerned that I’ll never know the truth. The subject, the light and the story work together in helping me create an image with the tonal expression of the platinum print.

Plastic seats under a window on the ferry to North Haven — Inside Seating on the Everett Libby ferry to North Haven

In our culture we sit to rest, read, share a meal or eat alone; we sit to talk, to worship, to learn and to nap. We sit on trains, buses, ferries, airplanes and cars. We sit in bars, schools, museums and on rides at county fairs. We sit for a haircut, dental work and at the doctor’s office. We sit in the courtroom, the boardroom, the theatre or the movies. We sit at our desks, on our decks and in our boats. We sit up straight, stretched out, curled up, spread over. We sit on four legs, lean back on two or rock and glide back and forth.

Three comfortable old chairs sit under trees in an open space in Beijing — Outdoor Living Room, Beijing, China

A seat is not only a tool to accommodate different activities. The architect Christopher Alexander said that the choice of what to sit on is more than just functional. Our choice is a complex matching of personality and mood and our perceived personality of the seat itself. Furniture design reflects the values and changing cultural habits of the times and is linked to historical events as well as serving to solve a problem. A chair can be a mass produced product or a work of art. Once a tool for only the wealthy seating is ubiquitous to most homes on this continent.

It is rare when I don’t come across some form of seating in the environs of my travels. No model sits more patiently and unconcerned about my presence while it is being photographed. I expect to enjoy the surprise of this ordinary subject in unexpected places for a long time to come.

Tillman Crane

2019