Taken from city buses, these images reveal people in their daily travels, and suggest stories about where they’re going and what is on their minds. The bus stops and street corners act like stages for little dramas to play out.
You can see masks here and there, as everyone emerges from the pandemic. Fleeting moments of indecision are frozen in place.
Reflections from the bus windows stretch across storefronts and big intersections, as the city’s vast panorama comes into play.
Swept along in the colorful swirl of city life, these pedestrians are often lost in their own thoughts or preoccupied with their next destination.
Each individual stands out from the crowd to focus our attention on their fashion, their gestures, their coupling or drifting apart.
Their private moments become public performance.
Viewed from above, the rush of humanity along pavement and through foyers takes on a certain poignancy as these anonymous passersby pause to gather their thoughts, argue or woo, and do something as mundane as figure out directions.
Alone, in pairs, with friends or in family groups, they seem isolated, vulnerable as scientific specimens—the way Harry Lime philosophized from the top of a Ferris Wheel in The Third Man: “Look down there. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stop moving — forever?“
At times they look upward questioningly, or hurry along in a flock not unlike that of migrating birds. While we look down from a discerning distance, a lifetime of struggle or content is revealed in a microsecond of movement.
Taken from the media, these large images resemble history paintings: capturing a dramatic moment in time where individuals are caught in a public crosscurrent. There are protests and vigils, accidents and scenes of chaos, moments of intimacy and perseverance.
Woven as Jacquard tapestries, 54" x 72", the photos echo their digital origin in the rough texture.
In the images, we can observe victims and perpetrators, innocents and onlookers. A common thread of pathos emerges, making it hard to look away—even though we might want to.
These photographs of museum-goers focus on the act of looking—and being looked at.
In an era of blockbuster exhibitions and celebrity artists, museum-going can become less an intimate experience than spectator sport. And people watching, as at a mall or a zoo, is part of the ritual. How strangers navigate their private/public boundaries in slow-motion choreography, often forming family-like groupings, is a form of urban anthropology. That the art and appreciator sometimes echo each other adds to the voyeuristic appeal.
More than just being cool, these images suggest, it's important to look cool.
Shot in the windows of tony shopping districts, A Model Life exposes the emptiness of extreme privilege. The featureless mannequins, devoid of expression and in some cases even heads, are superimposed against the reflections of anonymous buildings and deep blue sky.
They wear bikinis and designer gowns, exotic get-ups and casual daywear. But the overall effect of this street-level surrealism is that of zombies trapped in an abandoned cityscape. No humans, or human feeling, can be found anywhere.
Alone or in small groups, they aim to survive and offer cold comfort, like the touch of an elbow, to their fellow robotic simulacrums.
Click here to buy a 20-page book of “A Model Life” photographs.
As Dylan sang, "How does it feel?"
How does it feel to carry the weight of the last couple of years in contemporary America? In my studio, I asked friends, family and strangers to sit down and show how sorry they are for the current state of affairs. The expressions and gestures are theirs, reflecting a gamut from shock to sadness to resignation, and everything in between.
The SORRY Project is inspired by David Hockney's "Portrait of Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima (JP)," which was inspired in turn by Van Gogh's "Sorrowing Old Man."
The SORRY Project has revealed a wealth of feeling, just under the surface. I hope it creates a community of empathy among viewers as well.
What are the faces of modern American politics?
Come election year, the fans fill hockey rinks and high school gyms, convention halls and state fair arenas. They follow one candidate or another, true believers with a dose of fanaticism. They pump the air, they chant "USA USA!," they grab selfies with their leader, they wave flags and stomp the floor and bellow through bullhorns.
Based on news photos of the crowds at campaign events, these images use models to recreate the fans' behavior, isolating it under bright studio lights. Here, one or two at a time, we can examine their gestures as a social psychologist might.
We can survey their colorful getups, look them in the eye for a trace of craziness, and feel their mixture of exhilaration and earnestness. Their enthusiasm is contagious, and a little bit frightening.
In these infrared street portraits, citizens in face masks are caught in empty public spaces.
Flesh and tree leaves glow as if irradiated. The COVID-19 crisis is viewed as a scene out of a dystopian sci-fi film.
From "The Great Empty: A Renga in Time of Corona"
by Gary Duehr
Space-time swells, balloons.
Sun-bleached streets, their emptiness,
Sting the eyes: no one.
As in a 19th-century
Tintype, only transient ghosts.
*
We are ghosts, transients,
Overwhelmed by memories.
We are refugees.
In his drive, a guy unloads
12-packs from his Range Rover.
*
Here's the Great Empty:
Terminals, hotel lobbies,
Train stations, plazas.
Under ashen skies, this rain.
Down Boylston, a fierce wind whips.
In these self-portraits taken in museums and galleries, my image ghosts in the reflected artwork.
Sometimes I am barely visible against a field of gold or blue, other times my image becomes entangled with complex textures or shapes. Once in a while, you can glimpse shadowy figures lurking at the edge.
“Ghost in the Shell” is a record of my merging visually and psychologically with contemporary art.
A response to America’s climate of fear, “Unknown Suspects” is inspired by depictions of unknown terrorists in the media: those black silhouettes of head shots.
Culled from the web, the photo-based images in “Unknown Suspects” are translated into graphite on board. These anonymous, shadowy heads act as a kind of Rorschach test for our collective unconscious: what threats do we perceive in their vague ethnicity? We take notice of the tilt of the head, the shape of the ears, the curls or sweep of the hair.
Each image becomes a mirror that allows us to examine our other selves.
Graphite on board, 20” x 16”, framed in black.
These images explore the wounds and amputations inflicted on classic Roman and Greek statuary in museums. Some of the damage is obvious, such as a missing limb or blinded eye. Some of it mars the surface of a torso or spine. And some of it appears mechanical, such as the hole of a missing post.
The statues appear to be survivors of war or personal strife. They become empathetic figures, evocative of the trials of being human. They seem to speak to us across time.
Full of feeling, mute, the statues balance suffering with a certain dignity.
In these photographs of details of paintings in museums and books, the focus is on a swatch of cloth, a bare shoulder, a shadowy wall.
These elements, lifted from their original context, might be having a dialog with each other. What are they saying? Maybe something about an indistinct light, a crackled texture. Maybe they are asking the viewer to help fill in the gaps.
From these samples, a kind of timeless, anonymous portrait or interior is assembled. And like the details in art books, that blow up a small area for closer inspection, these fragments force attention to what may be overlooked.
These photos taken from daily papers follow our lives in public and private on almost a cellular level—moment by moment, in the midst of personal crisis or public outcry.
We see faces up close and street scenes of protests, front porches and playing fields, flowers and flames. We witness trauma as it unfolds at a hospital and fleeting times of joy.
As ephemeral as a newspaper, an iPhone captures these fragments of life in order to honor and preserve them.
