FORGET PHOTO, GIVE ME METADATA
TAKE THIS PHOTO

Jolts for photography’s twin dilemmas of considering and making. My signs for these times serve to sort out and call out our accelerating propensity to catalog rather than look, to identify rather than see, to label rather than delve, to state rather than question, to prioritize explanation over the explained.

These signs invite viewers to consider the very act of seeing, the role of photographs in their lives, and the tasks of making and viewing pictures. The texts are meant to work as blunt but multi-directional koans of 21st century photographic practices. The signs are produced with tools of contemporary photography (scans, Photoshop, photographs), and so far, have been printed with methods of trade and discourse (photo based screen printing). The size is historical 8×10 inches.

The first signs in this project came as distillations of observations made while teaching within a major art school photography program—we cited subjects, intentions, concepts, artists, techniques, more than we looked. The simplified, unpunctuated text and patterned graphics of the signs have taken on breadth and scope of their own; rich with art, advertising, media and cultural histories, boiled down to one meditative focal point.

SO MUCH MORE THAN WORDS CAN SAY

active 2013 – 2015