New Work: Grids, Typologies, and the Extended Image by Keith Johnson
My new work is about extending the photographic document beyond the single print using multiple images. I started doing work like this in the early 80s and it has periodically shown up over the years. Extended imagery is similar to what a poet might do when combining paragraphs, or a film maker does when splicing film into a montage. Recently though, I have devoted my energies to investigating both the grid and linear multiple presentations.
The camera documents better than any device the detail and surface of objects, places, and ideas, but sometimes the involvement with an idea goes on to look at multiple facets; consider what cubist painters accomplished early in the 20th century. Sometimes extended viewing of a visual idea would reveal not only the idea but additionally time, light, color, and comparison would change during the extended time spent looking. This is what has become compelling to me. Typology, topology, and recording have become the reason that I might stop to make a picture.
When presenting multiple images on a single piece of paper or arranging multiple framed prints on a wall in a grid or linear presentation the viewer is given a bunch of picture ideas with be involved with just as I had when I made the pictures. With a multiple image pictures a narrative, time study or comparison creates a visual experience larger than the sum of individual parts.
Keith Johnson lives and works in Hamden, CT.
To view more of Keith's work, please visit his website.
