The Mothman's Photographer: The Work of an Artist Touched by the Prophecies of the Infamous Mothman

Spurred by the realization that the 9/11 attacks were accurately predicted – in 1967 – by a friend who was seeing Mothman, Seattle artist Andy Colvin began documenting his experiences growing up in West Virginia. The resulting video featured interviews with dozens of paranormal witnesses and experts, including celebrated ufologist John Keel, who originally investigated the sightings in Colvin’s neighborhood. Colvin himself began a long series of interviews on radio and TV shows.
 

In addition to doing hundreds of hours of interviews, Colvin has so far generated over 3000 pages of writing and several thousand photographs, all devoted to exploring the mysteries of the Mothman phenomenon. This photo book, “The Mothman’s Photographer I,” features 300 of Colvin’s eerie, symbolic images. There are brief descriptions of all photos, an artist’s statement, and a forward by Dave Scott, curator for the Cincinnati Gallery of Conceptual Art.

Colvin’s images dramatically illustrate his theory that birdmen such as Mothman, Garuda, and Thunderbird are actually one and the same – an archetypal, crime-fighting “superhero” from the collective unconscious. The job of this avatar is to send dreams, visions, and psychic messages to ordinary humans, thus stimulating insight, creativity, and intellectual growth.

Regardless of the source, Colvin’s talent as an artist shines through in his drawings and photographs. Colvin’s confidence in his style – rooted in spirituality, intuition, and synchronicity, yet honed by academic work in ethnomusicology, cine-ethnography, and art history – is inspiring. Despite his spare, unblinking technical approach, his work is funny and entertaining. Somehow it achieves a poetic magic. In fact, it has been hailed by some as representing a breakthrough in how we perceive the mysterious. By devoting years to nothing but the audiovisual documentation of his own life, Colvin has produced a body of work that transcends the mundane and defies categorization.