Description
“A pivotal essence of photography’s role in socialization is the extreme degree of empathy contrived through an easily assumed, identifiable point-of-view. Optically convincing, detailed, and ideally desirous, this rich verisimiltude embellishes the teaching of otherwise simplistic tracts. Correspondingly, the ideologically congruent argument is invisible—one’s own propaganda is called “education.”
The grotesque caricature in obvious lampoon, coarse impressions in vulgar burlesque, have been classical devices of aesthetic discourse since Aristophanes. We are not seduced by farce, but rather, sharpened. Question the emotive, manipulative catharsis of sentiment and beware the sublime beauty of the specially-effected supernatural. State-of-the-art spectacle in the age of digitizing pixels promises a greater con-fusion of fact and fiction, truth and deceit, myth and history. Clearly, one can trust a bad joke from a gross fool, but are we not fools to bet our future in the trust of a bad actor orchestrated in the wrong part?
Seeing isn’t believing—Believing IS seeing.”
— Jim Pomeroy
Jim Pomeroy participated in Light Work’s Artist-in-Residence Program in 1988 and 1993.
