The photographers Mark Klett & Byron Wolfe and Matt Wilson have chosen the United States as their territory. After the many photographers who have explored this country, they immersed themselves in the USA to show us their travels and wanderings through simple and familiar images. Going against the current trend of large format photographs, they have resorted to a more modest form of expression, offering smaller images, inviting us to experience visual memories with carefree moments of contemplation.
Matt Wilson’s photographs reveal to us a poetic world. Untitled is an ongoing project on the American West, where the artist has worked regularly since 2011. The poetry of this work comes from its small format, but also from its color treatment, sfumato, contrasts and framing. Each image offers a new reading of the USA, which we thought we already knew. By photographing instinctively, close to nature and man, Matt Wilson provides an intimate and humanist vision of this infinitely large space.
The work of Mark Klett & Byron Wolfe also finds its starting point in the visual history of an area. Klett and Wolfe have lived in Arizona for more than twenty years. They are there in search of photographs from the 19th century photography missions. They have produced large panoramic prints of San Francisco, 100 years after the 1906 earthquake, and photographed Point Sublime using a 19th century topographic engraving. Revealing Territory, a series begun in the 1980s, announced their passion for the Great West. In Charting the Canyon, they reproduce these grand spaces in small sizes, reinforcing the feeling of immensity. They incorporate old postcards of the Grand Canyon into their photographs, reconstructing the same view of the landscape, offering a unusual and personal vision of America.
Julie Le Borgne, Curator
Small is Infinite – Matt Wilson, Mark Klett & Byron Wolfe
In part of Le Mois de la Photo 2012
From november 8th to december 21st, 2012
Galerie Tagomago
4, villa Ballu
75009 Paris – France
+33 (0)142 815 395
[email protected]
