Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Lisa Oppenheim's Killed Negatives, After Walker Evans

The new issue of Blindspot, co-edited by Taryn Simon, contains some wonderful, conceptually-minded photo projects. Lisa Oppenheim's Killed Negatives, After Walker Evans is one such example. In the press release for her 2008 exhibition at Store Gallery in London, it states:

"In ‘Killed Negatives, After Walker Evans’ (2007), Oppenheim uses Walker Evans’ unpublished photographs from 1938 found in the National Library of Congress. Evans was commissioned by the Farm Security Administration to document depression era rural America. These negatives are ‘killed’ because they had holes punched through them to prevent publication. Oppenheim printed them and conceptualises the holes as a space of potential contemporary interpretation."











All photographs from the series Killed Negatives, After Walker Evans

All Images © Lisa Oppenheim