joel conison, photography

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still life series #1

still life series #2

In this body of work my concerns are the signs, symbols, and icons of our society and their multiple interpretations depending upon who is interpreting and from what perspective. Due to this varied interpretation I have (in some cases) changed the pictorial nature of what was photographed, leaving only a depiction, an abstraction. This is one of the ways I have tried to provoke questions. Questions about what the image is (in its visceral sense), why the material of that object is changed, and what does this constructed nonfiction mean. Basically, things are not as they seem or as they are understood to be.

All of these factors are relevant to this work as I move the representational to the suggestive.

I question, not in the cynical sense but the observational one.

There are various methods I have used to provoke this. Formal issues are one concern. How line, form, and tone work together. By using limited tone the object photographed loses its perceived recognition. Also I have attempted to cast a sense of light, to show the image illuminated, not an object with a light shinning on it. The light is meant to be felt not seen. Another method employed was the absence of scale and proportion. Without scale, a questioning of the objects reality was introduced, thus its representational qualities become insufficiently factual.

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