MoMA
Posts tagged ‘Carter Mull’
December 9, 2009  |  Collection & Exhibitions
Q&A with Carter Mull for New Photography 2009
NP42_Mull_LATIMES Feb 23

Carter Mull. Los Angeles Times, Monday February 23, 2009. 2009. Chromogenic process print, 49 x 37" (124.5 x 94 cm). Collection Dr. Dana Beth Ardi, New York. Courtesy Marc Foxx, Los Angeles. © 2009 Carter Mull

Carter Mull‘s work in New Photography 2009 is full of vibrant color and patterns. Beyond the surface is a body of work that explores language, our relationship to images in an image-saturated world, and the spectre of the death of print media and chemical photography. In the following Q&A, Carter talks to me in detail about his work.

Eva Respini: How did you become interested in the Los Angeles Times as the starting point for the body of work on view in New Photography 2009?

Carter Mull: Initially, I was drawn to a question about the psychological impact of an image. Journalism and the media had been in the background of my thinking for a number of years—and I was curious about the question of how one responds to an image of distant trauma, contextualized within the framework of the local newspaper. Also, the very material—the literal placement of advertising next to news—was an intriguing reality.

ER: The title for this series is Triggers for Everyday Fiction, and you refer to these photographs as “triggers” and “responses.”  I like thinking about the relationship between the pictures as a kind of call and response. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

CM: The project began about two years ago with the initial program of considering a media site, in this case the Los Angeles Times, as a point of departure. I wanted to treat the lead image of the paper as a generator of sorts—and the output of the works as a whole as somehow governed by the grammar of the idea. The terms you refer to work as a nomenclature to designate points within the body of work. At the moment, I think about the images taken together as a series of passages—and as an active cognitive process.

November 4, 2009  |  Collection & Exhibitions
Sterling Ruby in New Photography 2009

New Photography is one of my favorite shows to organize.  Generally, it means working with artists of my own generation, and introducing work that I really believe in to a larger audience.  New Photography is about new ideas and new ways of working, and this year’s installment of the exhibition series (which has been around since 1985) is no different.  While in previous years we have highlighted work of artists that are not artistically related, this year, I decided to take a thematic approach and bring together the works of artists that participate in the lively debate on the nature of photography in the twenty-first century.  This new approach to the exhibition series is an experiment, which is very much in the spirit of the work in the show.