Description

Virginia Heckert Curator of Photography, The Getty Museum
 About Oil and Moss series:

 A few things have become touchstones in my thinking about photography. The first is László Moholy-Nagy’s belief … that an understanding of photography was essential to visual literacy. The second is John Szarkowski’s exploration in … Mirrors and Windows of the dichotomy between understanding a photograph as a means of self-expression that reflects «a portrait of the artist who has made it» … The third touchstone is the difference in our increasingly screen-filled world between experiencing a photograph as an image or as an object and how material presence enriches that experience … «Oil and Moss» project seemed to address all three of these criteria. By soaking his 35 mm black-and-white negatives in oil before printing them, he makes the increasing threat of oil spills… His project both explores a little-known corner of the world and expresses his deep concern for this environmental hazard