Aaron Hegert
Tuesday, 19 May 2009
Work from The Money Makers and Every Day.
Hegert’s work is a fantastic example of observational photography well backed by a solid concept. I included one shot from Every Day because it reminds me so powerfully of a Cartier-Bresson in style, humor, and composition.
“Public places around the world are inundated with advertising images that represent the perceived and imagined cultural values of society, from idealized bodies or attitudes to exaggerated versions of our fears and desires. My current series of photographs, titled The Money Makers–a reference to the basic purpose of advertisements to sell products, as well as an uneasy reference to value placed on art as a commodity–is an examination of the placement, context, meaning, and function of photographic images as advertising in public places and the possibilities for investment of new meaning within these images through their reuse. The concept is based on the belief that the materials necessary to build an effective critique of society today are already present within the language of that society and that through simple processes of decontextualization and reorganization another meaningful ensemble can be found. To explore these possibilities I have created a series of photographs in which I erase the text and branding elements from outdoor advertisements in Paris, freeing the image from its commercial duty and at the same time enhancing the reflection of the urban milieu in which they stand. These images–originally citizens of a pseudo world apart, involved in a one-way conversation about themselves and promising us nothing less than an artificially produced mass ego–I now present as liberated images, no longer ignorant of their surroundings and open to interpretations and uses they were previously denied.” – Aaron Hegert