Date of Submission

Spring 2014

Academic Programs and Concentrations

Photography

Project Advisor 1

Stephen Shore

Abstract/Artist's Statement

I began this project with an interest in high production public “spectacles” such as professional sporting events and tourist attractions. I wanted to use these places as a means to produce pictures that expressed some sort of cultural un- ease. Initially, there was no precise focus (or really any idea of how I was going to achieve my goal) other than a desire to go to tourist attractions and try to break the surface of these “spectacles” to get at something pithy inside.

For the first few months I was enthusiastic and traveling constantly. But my con- fidence collapsed after a trip to Disney World in Orlando, Florida. I realized that I kept going to more and more ambitious locations, and I was making pictures I thought were interesting, but didn’t come close to expressing the vague notion of a project I had started with.

Christopher Columbus, who voyaged to a continent entirely unknown to Euro- peans four times in his lifetime, believed until his death that he traveled to the East Indies. Likewise, I started this project on spectacle so confident I knew what I wanted to find and would find it. But again and again, the smoke and mirrors that public spectacle uses to direct the viewer’s attention confused me. While looking at all the work I had made in the past months, I came to see that the most interesting photographs I’d so taken so far all engaged, in some way, that very surface of spectacle.

The production of something “spectacular” and eye-catching involves a great deal of screening and obfuscation. Spectacle, like a magician, uses sleight of hand and misdirection to trick the audience into thinking miracles are happening right before their eyes. In some cases, the screen itself creates a hollow spectacle. It is a great contradiction, that a spectacle is sometimes not a display of anything, but just flashy misdirection surrounding nothing at all.

Open Access Agreement

On-Campus only

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Download

This work is protected by a Creative Commons license. Any use not permitted under that license is prohibited.

Bard Off-campus Download

Bard College faculty, staff, and students can login from off-campus by clicking on the Off-campus Download button and entering their Bard username and password.

Share

COinS