[ ], 2002-2006

hi there

wow, your series is stunning!
the 3 you have posted i really enjoy this one the best.
the other 2 are very strong, but the composition in this one
has lured me into the vast darkness in the center of the image

--- the glare doesn't bother me at all,
the lines i noticed, but then they add to the power of your images
"truth in process" ..

i don't know how i can critique this ( or the other 2) and i can't imagine standing infront of these huge prints.

very cool!

thanks for posting these

john

thanks john,

"truth in process" is something i'm quite interested in. i think that there is a certain sincerity in revealing those seams of construction. perhaps that is my philosophic aversion to digital photography - in dismissing the grain of film as such a seam in the attempt to create a perfectly seamless image so much of what makes the image have a life is lost. -it always comes back to walter benjamin and his premonitions in "art in the age of mechanical reproduction"...

maybe too that's why hitchcock's the Birds will always scare the bejeesus out of me way more than anything done with sgi.

damn, now i sound like a technophobe whilst typing away on the latest mac...

long live the luddites

Let me say that I quite like these photographs. They are nicely executed and make me think.

Having said that, I don't like your description(prescription?) of the photograph at all. Personally (and this is a subjective matter of taste), I would rather not be told what a particular photograph means in so many words because for me setting an agenda for a photograph takes away from the experience of it as a photograph. I am especially hesitant about things like whether or not it is a "liminal cultural moment." It might be that to me but then it might not - it can just be a pretty arrangement of overexposed billboards. I don't want to have to feel that if I hate this particular photograph, it might be because I am not quite up with my Benjamin or Lacan.

However, to come back to the photograph. It is indeed one of the rare ones that grows on the viewer. It makes me pause and look again - thank you for that.

-Anupam

thanks for the critique anupam,

and let me say that i completely understand what you mean with or by the description and i in no way intend to make photographs/art that absolutely necessitates a knowledge of the theoretical intricacies that goes into their production. in exhibition of these pieces they are accompanied by nothing at all. their titling is actually an empty piece of paper. when displayed there is to be no text at all accompanying the pieces. i simply wanted to inform the potential viewers in this setting as to some of the ideas that went into that work -- for better or for worse.

and the other thing about the pieces that i think is important that you can not realize in such a format here is that the billboards are not simply overexposed - they are completely white empty billboards that have been/stayed illuminated. in the pieces themselves, when one dives further into the image, you can even start to pick out the seems revealing that they are not in fact a simple trick of the film.

These 3 images should be shown together.... Once again, well done.

point well taken about the description. it's a problem of representing something that is dependent on its scale on such a small and intimate scale online... and trying to inform on some of the ideas and thoughts (admittedly unimportant in the viewer's final experience of the work) that went into the work. my work tends to take quite a while to achieve/actualize (i'm not the point, click, develop, print type of photographer and actually view my work more akin to sculpture or painting) so i when i present the work for critique to peers, i tend to err on the side of too much.

thanks for the critique... and i couldn't agree with you more about letting the pictures do the work so i'll edit that for future viewers. thanks.