Untitled

Joe Cameron is a photographer whose work explores the hidden contrasts innate to space and form. Cameron spent 35 years at the Corcoran School of Arts and Design as a Professor of Photography where he honed his creative eye through a practice of street photography. Cameron's photography is rooted in exploring rudimentary aspects of sight: the contrast of light versus dark and space versus form. He strips his subjects to their barest essentials, exposing a layered contrast innate to the interaction between object and space. In Untitled, balance is achieved through asymmetrical alignment of space and form. The artist may present a presence that is familiar, but does not reveal what it actually is. Untitled exemplifies Cameron's rooted practice of contrasting light and space to focus the eye around the true essence of his subject. What is bare and empty seems familiar and warm. The blank facade of a building, usually caught in the periphery of a passerby, is expanded into single focus by architectural form.

Jane Livingston (Author), Joe Cameron: The Extended Mall (The Nation’s Capital in Photographs, 1976: Joe Cameron) (Exh. cat.), Corcoran Gallery of Art, printed by Rapoport Printing Corporation, Washington, D.C., New York, 1976, ill. 10

HOME: Selections from the Corcoran Study Collection, Luther W. Brady Art Gallery, Washington DC, November 14, 2019 - March 13, 2020

The Nation's Capital in Photographs, 1976: Joe Cameron (The Extended Mall), Corcoran Gallery of Art [1869-2014], Washington DC, December 11, 1976 - February 21, 1977