Doug Hall “Bodies in Space”
Benrubi Gallery
[Image: Doug Hall "Monument Valley" (2008) archival pigment ink print 50 x 67 in.]
This event has ended.
“Bodies in Space” considers the notion that while we inhabit space we are in turn inhabited by it; that the meaning we derive is informed, at least in part, by our surroundings – how we are oriented and perhaps disoriented within them. We are not immune to the spaces we move through and the photographs in this exhibition depict different sites where such intersections occur, from a street corner in San Francisco to tourist sites in Rome or Yosemite, locations where we become the actors on these stages. In fact, two of the photographs depict actual film locations, Monument Valley was taken on a rise overlooking the site where several well known Westerns including “Stagecoach” were filmed. Gene Autry “in the Alabama Hills was the setting for an ambush in Autry’s “Boots and Saddles” and appears in Hopalong Cassidy’s “False Colors.”
Alongside these socio-landscapes, portraits show people waiting, searching, looking, anticipating; we see them in varying relationships to their surroundings. Individuals and couples are isolated within both urban and rural settings. When seen in combination with the scenic views, these portraits function the way close-ups might in film, breaking the plane of distance and providing proximity if not intimacy. Their presence also alters the rhythm in which we move among and between the pictures. In contrast, Hall’s photographs of people assembled in groups do not depict a single instance but are composites of multiple exposures, spanning several hours. In this sense each photograph is a temporal palimpsest, a carefully choreographed re-staging in which individuals are placed both in specific relation to one another and to their immediate surroundings.
Media
Schedule
from June 12, 2014 to July 25, 2014