This work is a documentation of the disappearance of someone very close to my family, Walt Thompson. He was like an uncle to me, a close family friend that we would visit every holiday season. I grew up playing with his daughters, Riley and Lily, and despite the slight age difference, we formed a close friendship. I wanted to use my artistic platform to spread the word of his disappearance and the mysterious circumstances surrounding it.
Walt was a pilot, he loved flying and would go out to fly his personal plane when he wasn’t flying for United Airlines. He went missing about 6 years ago, in 2015. His journal shows a shift in his behavior and attitude right before his disappearance. It mentions a “circular stone structure” and his obsession with it. Walt saw strange lights and experienced dizziness after viewing this structure. His plane was found crashed in a heavily wooded area, but the police found no evidence of his body near the crash site. Through research done on my own based on Walt’s journal, I found the location of the stone circle and a strange crystalline rock that glows when in close proximity to the stone circle. I also experienced dizziness and other adverse physical effects when I examined the stone structure. The contents of my research as well as objects from the family were used to create this visual exhibition.
Overall, Walt loved his daughters and supported them in whatever they did. He and his family treated me as one of their own, so I felt that it was only right to help them out in this way. My favorite part of the preparations for this exhibition was falsifying all of it. The creation of people, places and events entirely from my own imagination was thrilling. Everything that you see here is fake; the journals, the objects, the images and the narrative, all of it was made up by me. The people’s portraits were created by artificial intelligence. I fooled everyone in this way to raise everyone’s awareness to the fact that we live in a post-truth society and anything can be falsified and projected as true. What is the truth? Where can you find the truth, and when you find it how can you be sure it’s really the truth?
Sarah Lacey Photography 