The Museum of Contemporary Photography based in Chicago is where I have found several of my artist bloggs recently so I decided to check there again for someone new. I found a long list of photographers under the MPP section (Midwest Photographers Project) and just started clicking at random to see what I would find. I have to say that I must have clicked 25 times before I found one that could hold my interest for more then a few seconds. Now is this a statement on my, as well as current American attention spans? Or is this the realization that fine art photography has just gotten plain boring?
You would think that it would not take 25 clicks to find something worth wile, but it did and Paul Elledge is what I ended up with. While his images are generally something that I would not be interested in, they literally jumped out at me when compared to what they were up against. His images are violently colorful and dramatic. Over stylized and over the top. They represent a new form of photography that I have seen emerging recently; one that pushes the boundaries of reality and photoshop, fact and fiction.
The shots are not groundbreaking and revolutionary, but they possess a certain freedom and understanding that plain documentary photography that we see so much of now days is just well, boring. The images may be a little far off in the other direction of to crazy, but I don't really care. I'm tired of lackluster, unexciting, suffocated photographs that only cause you to reach for that back button in your browser. Straight and documentary photography have their places, and I love and practice them myself, but spitting out the same thing that people have been practicing for decades is getting us nowhere. Remembering the past and building off the masters is important, but at some point there needs to be a break away, a separation.
In conclusion, you go Paul Elledge. You make bizarre, wild, yet well crafted images so that more will follow. I know I will.
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