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About the 2005 Winners
The Leopold Godowsky, Jr. Color Photography Awards often reflect current cultural issues and artworld trends. Although the artists were chosen for their independent excellence, a theme that emerges in the 2005 exhibition is “the politicized landscape.” Many of the artists reference prior photographic traditions and genres—from travel and tourism to landscape and documentary—and in the process raise questions about the function and truth of photography itself.
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TIM DAVIS
Born Malawi, Africa; resides New York, NY
Tim Davis’s photographs selected for exhibit at the PRC are part of a much larger project of approximately 80 images. This series, titled “My Life in Politics,” was completed during a series of trips across the United States. Referencing Walker Evans’s 1930s journeys documenting American life and architecture, Davis sought to record how politics is interpreted by average Americans and enters into their daily lives and surroundings. Using personal experience combined with a longstanding practice of sifting through loaded architectural arenas for deeper and more personal meanings, Davis finds a complex agenda in the country's political signs, slogans, and behaviors. One People, One Nation, One Taco, One Destiny, photographed at a taco stand in “South Central,” Los Angeles, finds a laughable commercial slogan accompanying a dramatic mural of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In Seven Entertainers, personalities are flattened into disposable, portable cutouts that make no distinction between politician and celebrity. US Stretched reveals geography amusingly distorted for graphic and marketing purposes. A key point that emerges in these images is the abundance of communications media used to promote and advertise political issues, such as in Grandmother’s Buttons. While signage might not go far below the surface in revealing true political behavior and content, photography itself is likewise concerned, in effect, with façades. American politics might be superficial, to an extent, but Davis shows us that this surface is elaborate and important.
Davis was born in 1969 in Malawi, Africa, and holds an MFA in Photography from Yale University (CT). Currently he is a Visiting Professor of Photography at Bard College (NY). His work is in numerous public collections including Brooklyn Museum of Art (NY), Guggenheim Museum (NY), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (DC), and Fotomuseum Winterthur (Switzerland). Other recently published photographic projects include Permanent Collection (Nazraeli Press, 2005), and Lots (Coromandel Express, 2001). My Life in Politics, originally commissioned by the Bohen Foundation, will be published by Aperture in 2006. Tim Davis is represented by Greenberg Van Doren Gallery (NY). >>>
Davis was born in 1969 in Malawi, Africa, and holds an MFA in Photography from Yale University (CT). Currently he is a Visiting Professor of Photography at Bard College (NY). His work is in numerous public collections including Brooklyn Museum of Art (NY), Guggenheim Museum (NY), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (DC), and Fotomuseum Winterthur (Switzerland). Other recently published photographic projects include Permanent Collection (Nazraeli Press, 2005), and Lots (Coromandel Express, 2001). My Life in Politics, originally commissioned by the Bohen Foundation, will be published by Aperture in 2006. Tim Davis is represented by Greenberg Van Doren Gallery (NY). >>>
