To celebrate the publication of The Photographer’s Playbook: 307 Assignments and Ideas, Aperture commissioned twenty-two photographers to create new works in response to assignments from the book. Curated by Christopher McCall of Pier 24 Photography, the project sparked a fascinating dialog between some of the world’s leading photographers and educators working today. What follows is an insight into the possibilities of looking at photography through someone else’s eyes.
"This suite of three small-town newspaper pictures grapples with the idea of nostalgia in both the material, tactile sense and the conceptual, cultural one. The halftone images on newsprint are meant to set in motion a nostalgic response to a particular type of hybrid vernacular/mass-distribution image found in weekly rural newspapers, which have become an antiquated form of communication. The images themselves deal directly and literally with the idea of loss—in this case, two homes lost to fire, and the third to a mudslide. I’ve always thought it was strange to stand someone directly in front of their personal tragedy and force them to look at it while you photograph them for the rest of the community to see."
–Ron Jude
The artist responded to Aaron Schuman's assignment, nos·tal·gia, on page 309 of The Photographer's Playbook:
"[Photography], a medium that instantaneously captures and preserves the present as it transforms into the past, could be argued, inherently possesses varying degrees of nostalgia...create a photographic work that consciously wrestles with the concept of “nostalgia” and photography’s unique relationship to it...Genuinely engage with this curious and oddly powerful human emotion through the photographic image."
Triptych of Archival Inkjet Prints on Deacidified Newsprint
Unique piece
Paper Size: 11 x 14 inches
Image Size: 11 x 14 inches
Signed and numbered by the artist
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