Livre d’Or

Lens Culture - New York - 2019

" I've had some time to look at and assess your imagery, and I wish to offer you my feedback. You have some very strong work in your [lensculture] portfolio. From one perspective, these are rather traditional portraits in terms of the selection of subject matter and also the compositional construction. Of course, you include a number of rather characteristic effects which begin to interestingly unmake or recast the subject. Most of the images contain a sort of pixelated or quasi pixelated aspect to many areas, particularly edge areas. This not only adds a particular and painterly aesthetic to some of the pictures, but it also grounds the photographs in contemporary photographic process. In some ways, perhaps the images are related to glitch culture, although the proliferation of pixelated areas seems rather regimented and prescribed. These effects are perhaps the most compelling in images one, three and seven - here, it is almost as if the surface of the picture is opening up, revealing a void or cavity of sorts. Other pictures feature are far more restrained use of such alterations, as in image one and ten. I think both of these approaches are engaging and are probably necessary. Of course, there's a wide variety of different approaches you can take in utilizing the sort of aesthetic, and I think would be very interesting to deploy this in many different ways across different pictures. In terms of your compositions, all of your pictures are variations upon a traditional portrait headshot - the head of each subject is visible, and sometimes the neck, the shoulders and an arm or two. In addition, the subjects are depicted in roughly the same scale, and almost always in or very near the middle of the picture. I'm curious as to why such consistency in compositional construction is necessary. You did not include a project statement, so accounting for your choice of subject matter, composition and aesthetic would be very welcome. I urge you to take the opportunity to root the viewer in a specific context for your work whenever possible - this will aid viewers in coming to a more fully informed and realized appreciation of your vision. I wish to reiterate that your work is quite commendable overall, and I particularly enjoy the more restrained deployment of pixelated effects. Image one, for example, is one of your finer images. Not only is the pixelated effect rather minimal, in a pleasing way, but there's a very dark tonality to the picture which is far different from most of the other images, and this lends to the image a particular atmosphere that is quite enticing. I wish you the best of luck in progressing with your work."