New Work #42 (2009–)

“New Work is an exploration of visual language and process. In a sense, it is an examination of how we see, what we see, what merits being seen, and how images function in contemporary visual culture.”

—Jordan Tate

Aperture is excited to offer to our collecting audience the limited-edition print New Work #42 by Aperture Portfolio Prize finalist Jordan Tate. This photograph is included in Tate’s thought-provoking series New Work, which investigates the process of image-making and the role new technology plays in contemporary photography.

Tate belongs to a growing group of photographers indebted to predecessors like Christopher Williams and James Welling. Tate pushes the conversation beyond nostalgia and squarely into the present, however, by indulging in screen-based images and nontraditional output methods like lenticular screens, animated GIFs, and 3-D anaglyphs. His images frequently focus on indicators of an image in the making, such as this photograph of a Polaroid that could easily be an exposure/lighting test for a studio shoot. New Work offers a compelling and quirky exploration of the work involved in new photography.

Archival Pigment Print
Edition of 25 and 4 Artist’s Proofs
Paper Size: 14 3/8 x 24 inches
Image Size: 12 7/8 x 22 inches
Signed and numbered by the artist

Jordan Tate (b. 1981, Kentucky) is an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio. Tate, a Fulbright Fellow (2008–9), has a Bachelor of Philosophy in Interdisciplinary Studies from Miami University and an MFA in Photography from Indiana University. His work is held in collections nationwide, including Rhizome at the New Museum; the Museum of Contemporary Photography; The Fred and Laura Bidwell Collection; the Cincinnati Art Museum; the Columbus Museum of Art; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. He has exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the United States and Europe. Tate shows his curiosity about the ontology and transparency of the photograph in a post-digital, image-literate age through his photographic work and research. Jordan Tate is the founding editor of the contemporary art blog, I like this art.