Casey McGonagle: Halfsleep
@ HungryMan Gallery
2135 N Rockwell St, Chicago, IL 60647
Opening Saturday, April 10th, from 6PM - 11PM
On view through Saturday, April 24th
It is Casey McGonagle‘s play with repeated symbols and compositions that thread this selection of images together, somewhat constructing a narrative of his most recent journey through New Mexico and Los Angeles this past winter. These photographs are a testament of his dedication to a life of image making, in which he aspires to be taken seriously through his non-arbitrary presentation of black and white. There is no question that the works of Walker Evans, and his protégé Robert Frank are called to reference– pioneers in the genre of photographing the American road trip and the genesis of documentary photography. McGonagle is careful to avoid his images becoming trapped in social realism, but capitalizes on his dramatization of the actual– capturing particular truths while simultaneously transcending them. This is reiterated in Aaron Siskind’s words: “We came to see that the literal representation of a fact (or idea) can signify less than the fact or idea itself (is altogether dull), that a picture or a series of pictures must be informed with such things as order, rhythm, emphasis, etc., –qualities which result from the perception and feeling of the photographer, and are not necessarily–(or apparently) the property of the subject.”
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