Friday, April 4, 2008

Thematic Considerations


While waiting in the reception room at Kaiser the other day, I was leafing through my "handout," the little booklet I’ve put together to show my photographs to gallery people, interested parties, or anyone. It’s divided into two sections: "Photographs" and "Limited Editions." The Limited Editions section covers works produced by James Linden (letterpress editions) and Glen Drive Productions (inexpensive, spiral-bound editions.)

The Photographs section, though, is honestly a bit of a jumble. I’ve got landscapes, street scenes, old photos, new photos, black and white and color. As Rebecca Saito has written:

Going through a stack of Mike Mundy’s photos can be somewhat disconcerting. Some of them are color; some are black and white. Photographs of the Oki Dog and Trashy Lingerie in Los Angeles mix with serene autumn colors in Rhode Island. Black and white images of austere mountain landscapes are set against seductive Valentine’s Day mannequins in Macy’s. It seems clear that Mike has never been interested in cultivating a distinctive photographic style.

Well, that’s certainly true. But now I’m wondering. I think that I should, possibly, present a more unified image, at least in my little handout. I’ve been thinking of having, in the Photographs section, just images of Los Angeles (as representing one of my more consistent themes over the past decades.) Maybe "Los Angeles, 1973—2008."

I might just give it a try.

Photo: One Dollar Yard Sale—Los Angeles, 2007

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