“Almost Heroic” David Myers
Softcover, 96. pages. Offset printed, duotone.
Photographs apprehend the surfaces of the world fixed in viewpoint and time, specific surfaces whose literalness and immediacy make it difficult to extrapolate accurate and reasonable generalizations about the world that exists outside its borders. Which is a way of saying that individual photographs often give a very limited and tendentious view of external reality. Better, I reasoned, a series of images that could, in a sense, surround its subject and give some better sense of it…Working in a series allows points to be raised, asserted through repetition, critiqued, restructured into subcategories; a visual syntax can be evolved to show a number of facets of the same subject. The effect is comparable with non-narrative film, a paper movie to use Larry Sultan’s phrase. -Lewis Baltz
The act of photography in its singular drive for images of significance strives, in its individual ability, to exhibit something approaching the monumental or heroic. The arrested moment, carved from a potential flowing index of the turning world is fixed when something of resonance is observed and captured by the photographer. Of all the potential angles, moments, shades of light, subjects and passing of time that the photographer could have permitted fixity, the single image chosen is culled, sliced thinly from the membrane of the world in front of them. Though this very basic explanation of a result, if not motivation, and it reduces the act of photography to single images. This act is how we often associate to the photograph’s punctuating significance. Conjecture about the continued domination of the singular image stems from anything between historical iconography, newspapers, and social media streams and more.
Though photography is generally assumed and digested for its singular framing, its ability to be serialized, particularly in book or magazine publication, suggests something more expansive and may not be confined to a single frame, but is instead, understood as a sum of its aggregate form or multiple frames. In considering this, the single frame is reduced from the monumental, and its punctuation is connected with its association to the other images in serial motivation. As prodigious photographer and writer, Lewis Baltz has noted, points are raised and are to be asserted through repetition and may be restructured to provide differing results. In denying the singular image its potency, it is reduced, and it must relate to more images to fulfill its potential.
David Myers’ new book Almost Heroic considers serial imagery as part of a way to paraphrase, through images, something large in concept that is conflated by its very presence, namely the disused Olympic stadium leftover from the Athens Olympics in 2004. As the site, laid dormant since the event, lays on the border of a vast redevelopment, questions arise as to the significance of the site and what to do with it. Shot in a very short time span in May 2023, Myers walks the site, focusing on inactive forms that emphasize the loneliness of former Olympic glory. Disused and falling into ruin, the stadium abuts the sea. There is a romance in its decay, yet Myers denies this, instead dwelling on interludes of serial frames that build an atmosphere where one questions the vast history of Athens as a city and the Olympic site, refusing photography’s desire to overemphasize the punctuating nature of the monumentalized single image. Instead, Myers walks and details, a structure otherwise monumental and reduces it without providing gravitas or definitions, accepting things simply as they are in the tradition of Baltz, Robert Adams, and John Gossage.
Baltz, Lewis. From Landscape: Theory, ed Carol Di Grappa) New York: Lustrum Press, 19080) 23-39.
Softcover, 96. pages. Offset printed, duotone.
Photographs apprehend the surfaces of the world fixed in viewpoint and time, specific surfaces whose literalness and immediacy make it difficult to extrapolate accurate and reasonable generalizations about the world that exists outside its borders. Which is a way of saying that individual photographs often give a very limited and tendentious view of external reality. Better, I reasoned, a series of images that could, in a sense, surround its subject and give some better sense of it…Working in a series allows points to be raised, asserted through repetition, critiqued, restructured into subcategories; a visual syntax can be evolved to show a number of facets of the same subject. The effect is comparable with non-narrative film, a paper movie to use Larry Sultan’s phrase. -Lewis Baltz
The act of photography in its singular drive for images of significance strives, in its individual ability, to exhibit something approaching the monumental or heroic. The arrested moment, carved from a potential flowing index of the turning world is fixed when something of resonance is observed and captured by the photographer. Of all the potential angles, moments, shades of light, subjects and passing of time that the photographer could have permitted fixity, the single image chosen is culled, sliced thinly from the membrane of the world in front of them. Though this very basic explanation of a result, if not motivation, and it reduces the act of photography to single images. This act is how we often associate to the photograph’s punctuating significance. Conjecture about the continued domination of the singular image stems from anything between historical iconography, newspapers, and social media streams and more.
Though photography is generally assumed and digested for its singular framing, its ability to be serialized, particularly in book or magazine publication, suggests something more expansive and may not be confined to a single frame, but is instead, understood as a sum of its aggregate form or multiple frames. In considering this, the single frame is reduced from the monumental, and its punctuation is connected with its association to the other images in serial motivation. As prodigious photographer and writer, Lewis Baltz has noted, points are raised and are to be asserted through repetition and may be restructured to provide differing results. In denying the singular image its potency, it is reduced, and it must relate to more images to fulfill its potential.
David Myers’ new book Almost Heroic considers serial imagery as part of a way to paraphrase, through images, something large in concept that is conflated by its very presence, namely the disused Olympic stadium leftover from the Athens Olympics in 2004. As the site, laid dormant since the event, lays on the border of a vast redevelopment, questions arise as to the significance of the site and what to do with it. Shot in a very short time span in May 2023, Myers walks the site, focusing on inactive forms that emphasize the loneliness of former Olympic glory. Disused and falling into ruin, the stadium abuts the sea. There is a romance in its decay, yet Myers denies this, instead dwelling on interludes of serial frames that build an atmosphere where one questions the vast history of Athens as a city and the Olympic site, refusing photography’s desire to overemphasize the punctuating nature of the monumentalized single image. Instead, Myers walks and details, a structure otherwise monumental and reduces it without providing gravitas or definitions, accepting things simply as they are in the tradition of Baltz, Robert Adams, and John Gossage.
Baltz, Lewis. From Landscape: Theory, ed Carol Di Grappa) New York: Lustrum Press, 19080) 23-39.
Softcover, 96. pages. Offset printed, duotone.
Photographs apprehend the surfaces of the world fixed in viewpoint and time, specific surfaces whose literalness and immediacy make it difficult to extrapolate accurate and reasonable generalizations about the world that exists outside its borders. Which is a way of saying that individual photographs often give a very limited and tendentious view of external reality. Better, I reasoned, a series of images that could, in a sense, surround its subject and give some better sense of it…Working in a series allows points to be raised, asserted through repetition, critiqued, restructured into subcategories; a visual syntax can be evolved to show a number of facets of the same subject. The effect is comparable with non-narrative film, a paper movie to use Larry Sultan’s phrase. -Lewis Baltz
The act of photography in its singular drive for images of significance strives, in its individual ability, to exhibit something approaching the monumental or heroic. The arrested moment, carved from a potential flowing index of the turning world is fixed when something of resonance is observed and captured by the photographer. Of all the potential angles, moments, shades of light, subjects and passing of time that the photographer could have permitted fixity, the single image chosen is culled, sliced thinly from the membrane of the world in front of them. Though this very basic explanation of a result, if not motivation, and it reduces the act of photography to single images. This act is how we often associate to the photograph’s punctuating significance. Conjecture about the continued domination of the singular image stems from anything between historical iconography, newspapers, and social media streams and more.
Though photography is generally assumed and digested for its singular framing, its ability to be serialized, particularly in book or magazine publication, suggests something more expansive and may not be confined to a single frame, but is instead, understood as a sum of its aggregate form or multiple frames. In considering this, the single frame is reduced from the monumental, and its punctuation is connected with its association to the other images in serial motivation. As prodigious photographer and writer, Lewis Baltz has noted, points are raised and are to be asserted through repetition and may be restructured to provide differing results. In denying the singular image its potency, it is reduced, and it must relate to more images to fulfill its potential.
David Myers’ new book Almost Heroic considers serial imagery as part of a way to paraphrase, through images, something large in concept that is conflated by its very presence, namely the disused Olympic stadium leftover from the Athens Olympics in 2004. As the site, laid dormant since the event, lays on the border of a vast redevelopment, questions arise as to the significance of the site and what to do with it. Shot in a very short time span in May 2023, Myers walks the site, focusing on inactive forms that emphasize the loneliness of former Olympic glory. Disused and falling into ruin, the stadium abuts the sea. There is a romance in its decay, yet Myers denies this, instead dwelling on interludes of serial frames that build an atmosphere where one questions the vast history of Athens as a city and the Olympic site, refusing photography’s desire to overemphasize the punctuating nature of the monumentalized single image. Instead, Myers walks and details, a structure otherwise monumental and reduces it without providing gravitas or definitions, accepting things simply as they are in the tradition of Baltz, Robert Adams, and John Gossage.
Baltz, Lewis. From Landscape: Theory, ed Carol Di Grappa) New York: Lustrum Press, 19080) 23-39.