David Hilliard: Photographs

David Hilliard's vibrant color photographs, usually triptychs or larger compositions, present elaborate narratives exploring a range of themes and situations, from the awkwardness of adolescence to masculinity disarmed. Formally, these staged photographs share the style of contemporary photographers like Gregory Crewdson and Anna Gaskell, among others. Yet Hilliard draws less from the realm of the fantastic and instead looks to his immediate surroundings to draw inspiration, as he deftly fuses autobiography with fiction to engage a host of complex ideas.

This lush monograph is the first major publication of Hilliard's work. Included are works from the artist's ongoing series of his father that demonstrate Hilliard's ability to tangle fact with fiction as the resulting images, underscored by the artist's wry outlook on the world, convey a distinct poignancy. Other works engage issues of intimacy, homoeroticism, and identity. The resulting scenes are as often elegiac as they are comical, always orchestrated with precision, and with a marriage of form and content that work together to immerse the viewer in the visual narrative.

"Hilliard's vision embraces the playful aspects of contemporary life as readily as its pathos." —Los Angeles Times

David Hilliard holds an MFA from and is a professor of photography at Yale University. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2001, and is widely collected and shown. His work has appeared in publications such as; Blind Spot; and ARTnews. He is represented by Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York; Bernard Toale Gallery, Boston; and Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta.

Photographs by David Hilliard
Essay by Charlotte Cotton
Interview by Vince Aletti
Hardcover
15 x 9 3/4 inches
96 pages
978-1-931788-58-8
50 four-color photographs
Spring 2005