Description
In the series Untitled Photographic Pictures, Andrew Wright explores points of intersection and exchange between several pictorial styles and practices. Printed using some of the latest printing technologies, these larger than life images suggest the grandeur of classical painting and raise the question of photography’s relationship with a tradition of producing and exhibiting large-scale gallery pictures. As a series of ‘straight-from-the-camera’ snapshots, this body of work was made using a uniquely photographic technique. Digital photographs themselves exhibit qualities that seem to emulate the effects of older lenses and photographic processes: inconsistencies, odd and unexpected optical effects, and the use of a preset, black-and-white treatment all contribute to evoking out-of-date, or even outmoded, pictorial concerns. The neglected and rural landscape captured in these photographs struggles to emerge as the subject of these pictures. Instead, Untitled Photographic Pictures explores an approach to photography in which ideas of the Romantic, the picturesque, and the monumental filter and condition our experience of the visible subject matter.
Wright has exhibited both nationally and internationally. He is also the recipient of several awards, from the Canada Council for the Arts, City of Ottawa, Ontario Arts Council, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), and the Waterloo Regional Arts Fund.