Over the years, Morris’s photographs have documented sites of his travel destinations, depicting prominent monuments and its grandeur. His recent works have shifted to focus on the indexical markers of the elemental, making the unseen, seen and deviating from the larger context of place.  

Such an example is Tidewater, which Morris took while on a trip to Japan in 2019. It depicts a daringly cropped image of a road sign to the point we can neither read it for its original textual function nor recognize it as a useful symbol to direct us as a road sign should. Instead Tidewater, depicts the sign as a temporal marker of time. The weathered painted metal, flickers of rust are all signs of its long existence. The new take in his approach frames visual allusions that inevitably serve as a reference point to both natural processes and landscape. Take Dimension for example. The imagery suggests a pond-like scenery filled with green algae, and an aerial view of a singled out green island. That is to say, the original source of this image is a close-up shot of rusting, enframing metallic signs, transformed at the fate of the forces of nature. 

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Michael Morris lives between Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA and Umbira, Italy. He is represented by Filarete Art Studio in Empoli (Florence), Italy and is associated with Shatto Gallery in Los Angeles, California. Prior to his career in technology he studied photography at Stephen F. Austin State University and currently is part of a group of Italian and American artists in both countries.