Richard Nonas
Text for the book Iterations, 2019
A photography not of abstraction, but rather of actual absence. Of aggressive limitation. An attempt to see and show more, by seeing and showing a carefully constructed less. —A photography not denying its own limitations but rather acknowledging and using them. —A photography that acknowledges its own pull toward theatrical realism, its need of strongly implied narrative; one that acknowledges its own inevitable loss in the translation of thick vision to ink-on-paper flatness. —A photography that acknowledges that but pushes through.
A photography, I mean, of translucent seeing; of narrative erasure. Of light itself as emotional content, of color as physical form. —A photography of selected seeing, of partial seeing; a photography of removal. Of translucent seeing pushing through. —A photography of swirling color thickened by physical bands of water-born pigments. Of multiple layers that cut and skew light.
A photography of no story at all. Blood-red translucence only. —And the captured presence of light tearing through.