To work on a personal subject is to expand, in some ways, the limits of self-portrait, to invent a photographic language combining introspection and projection that may very well include fiction. It is a visual contribution to the memoirs and first-hand accounts that have marked literary history, and which have helped to define time on an individual level, where interpretation and incompleteness reign.
Doug DuBois spent over 20 years developing a family epic …… all the days and nights. The father’s near-fatal accident, the mother’s suicide attempt, the parents’ inevitable divorce. Each scene illustrates a milestone in the family’s history, revealing the ways in which the artist defines, and comes to understand, his place in this micro-community.
When Dubois started his most recent project, My Last Day at Seventeen, he figured it would take a few months. It went on for four years. Invited for a residency in Cobh, County Cork, in southwest Ireland, he turned a local group of hard-living teenagers into a family. They spend most of their time hanging out, drinking and smoking, became parents at 16, and can only look forward to an uncertain future.
This project, on display at Silver Eye, marks a change in DuBois’ approach to photography, turning it into a means to bring fantasy and reality together. Some photographs are retouched, or completely staged, without undoing their documentary truth. Paradoxically, adding fictional elements to the real makes the story more authentic.
This style is adopted by a student of Dubois, Aaron Blum, in his series Born and Raised. A variation on the self-portrait, this series shows the artist through his hometown, and the fantasies this place arouses.
Laurence Cornet
“Doug DuBois et Aaron Blum : Continuum”
Until June 1st, 2013
Lecture and Booksigning on April 11th, 2013
Meeting with artists on April 12th, 2013 6pm – 8.30pm
Silver Eye Center for Photography
1015 East Carson Street
Pittsburgh, PA
USA
