Priola pays particular attention to otherwise unnoticed details in the cityscape, a quality that not only recurs throughout his oeuvre, but which also places his work in line with a strong tradition of California documentary photography. Close-ups and attention to detail reveal something different: a portrait of what is usually discarded or missing, like unassuming weep holes in Alameda Street or minuscule weeds making their way up through the pavement in Chestnut Street . But these details are subtle to the point of being conceptual; from afar both images appear to be monochromes.
In his characteristic black-and-white gelatin silver prints, San Franicisco-based J. John Priola adopts the aesthetic of American modernist photography. He pays particular attention to and emphasizes image surface while at the same time manipulating light to create dramatic effects.
In the series Horizons (2010), Lipps uses appropriation to riff on Modernism’s fascination with abstract form...
Untitled (Women) (2011) presents a startlingly succinct history of violently romanticized femininity...
Catherine Opie’s candid photograph Cathy (bed Self-portrait) (1987) shows the artist atop a bed wearing a negligee and a dildo; the latter is attached to a whip that she holds in her teeth...
Temps Mort is the result of one year of mobile phone exchanges of still images and videos between the artist and a person incarcerated in prison...
Annie Pootoogook created COMPOSITION (EEGYVUDLUK DRINKING TEA) at a pivotal moment in her career...