Snap : Photographs by David Sprigle - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1883923417 ISBN 13: 9781883923419

Publisher: Fotofactory Pr, 1999

Synopsis

In SNAP, Sprigle fundamentally changes the way we understand the beauty of the accidental moment. These images of rough elegance are reminiscent of the attenuated figures, movement and tension of Baroque Paintings. Yet, the characteristics are random--products of ostensible lighting conditions. The photos, Sprigle's newest series, are a visual essay about our instant culture. About a new aesthetic that arises from the intersection of cheap consumer technology and art. He presents a sanctioned voyeurism: reality tightly cropped, frontally composed and blurred by time to become unexpectedly beautiful. His color pallet, seemingly based in oil paint rather then photographic grain, is drawn from the Impressionistic Masters. Sprigle's work examines the way light rearranges an almost-classical memory of the human form.

About this title

About the Author

Best known for his photorealistic black and white portraits and nudes of ordinary people, Sprigle defined a movement of homo-erotic photographers which emerged in the early 1990s not from the world of fashion or commercial photography, but rather from the trenches of a changing--often personal--reality. Sprigle has long sought to document and incite shifts in America s relationship with eroticism by casually capturing unguarded naked moments. The Polaroid series presented in SNAP echoes his sociological motive and an emphasis on gesture and structural precision, through the abstract exposure of a visual choreography.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

"Venice Beach of the Mind" Introduction by Arthur Tress,

David Sprigle is part of the scene, the "Venice Beach of the Mind" scene, that tireless beach-front promenade of the floating world. A never ebbing flow of eclectic humanity gliding past and beneath his windows. From his second floor perch over the boardwalk, through his salt-sprayed picture windows, he descends like a voracious seagull, hard and sharp of eye, upon this drifting urban playa: the jetsam of L.A.'s dark edge, the blanketed homeless, the pierced and tattooed, the shirtless skateboarders, the frantic surfers, the visiting fireman. It's a carnival parade of a perpetual Mardi Gras--an infinite set of character actors awaiting only Sprigle's recognition for their one and only chance at the great Hollywood screen test. Done spontaneously by an instant camera.

His studio is his apartment, complete with turquoise walls--pre-fifties--post-punk hung with classic erotic art and thrift shop paintings. On his coffee table are the latest beefcake calendars and Hustler Magazines, comprising a fit reading room for the polysexual personae of the late 90's. Sprigle pulls the boys and girls from the streets below up to his studio. There, they undress, become erect or fondle breasts for him without reservation. "It's only a Polaroid." One that nonetheless throws out mini-posters of our most private moments, uniquely designed for our culture of instant gratification. We permit these Polaroids, stillborn in a second, to probe our sensual bodies because they seem not real--only transient touches recording our insubstantial, translucent selves. Willingly, we give our skin to his lens because he defines for us what we want ourselves to be: warm sensations of undefinable flowing energy translated into blurred, grainy, and warm-toned images from his camera. It excites us... and we love him for it.

Of course these private snapshots of our sexual temperature are never taken to the drug store, but given immediately to hold in the hand and view in startled awe. They have registered and read the depths of our simmering erotic selves, molten to the eye and burning to the finger's touch.

If you could touch these rose-colored, scintillating bodies. If you could run your hands down the thighs, around the breasts, along the erections of Sprigle's subjects, you would feel the Braille of secret wants, palpitating in pitch to the pores of trembling fingertips.

These images are purposely vague and indistinct so you can penetrate beyond the flesh and into the bones while loosing the edge of your own identity, blending with the images into one formless pulse of desire.

Like the sepia-toned, vibrating visions of Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron's great grand dames, Sprigle's Venicians are "polarized" into new stop-action figures. They burn to become alive in the pupil of your eye and in the palm of your hand. Let them breathe again.

Arthur Tress
Cambria, California

Edition details

• Publisher: Fotofactory Pr
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1883923417
• ISBN 13: 9781883923419
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 96
• Editor: Stephen Patrick Foery