JOHN HUMBLE – OTHER PLACES / VENICE BEACH
2011-04-18With Other Places, Humble decided to broaden his scope and “drive around the United States and photograph the American Landscape.” Previously, his work was created with a large view camera, but advancements in digital photography enabled him to make his new photos with a hand-held camera, allowing more freedom and mobility. Humble made a series of extensive trips, staying primarily on smaller country roads. It is, of course, significant that his explorations were made in a car, and that his discoveries have become part of a great tradition in American photographic road trips.Like his observations in Los Angeles, these American pictures are about insights in juxtaposition; aged and vacant storefronts sit beside gaudy drive-thrus, hand-painted religious billboards stand in empty fields, as do newly constructed, box-like churches that look more like concrete-slab industrial parks.
As a counterpoint to Humble’s photographs of Middle America, he will concurrently present a series of photographs of Venice Beach. As the artist describes it, “there is no place in the world like the tawdry three-ring circus of Venice…electric guitar players on rollerblades, marijuana doctors, tarot readers, muscle builders, tattoo shops, drug addicts, entertainers, and people speaking every language under the sun.”
Opposite – Closed, Enoch, Utah, 2010
Exhibition runs through to May 7th, 2011
Craig Krull Gallery
Bergamot Station
2525 Michigan Avenue
Building B-3
Santa Monica
California
90404
