Until May 4, 2025, The Reef in Los Angeles is showing Graham Howe with an exhibition entitled: Color Theory and the Fiction of Sight. The exhibition is presented by this text:
Graham Howe’s Color Theory and the Fiction of Sight is an exploration of color perception and the nature of photographic representation. Created between 1983 and 1984, this body of work challenges assumptions about color photography, questioning whether it serves merely as a record of reality or functions as a kind of visual fiction.
Reflecting on his process, Howe states, “I was captivated by The New Color Photography—Eggleston, Shore, Meyerowitz—until I started questioning the nature of color photography. Is it just a representation, or a kind of fiction? These questions drove my experiments, turning my studio into a laboratory of perception.”
Using a 5×7 inch view camera and drawing from photo-technical literature, Howe investigated the mechanics of color photography—the interplay of primary and secondary colors, the physics of reflected and projected light, and the ways in which perception reshapes visual truth.
“I didn’t want to just study charts and diagrams. I wanted to test them, to push them until they gave way to something unexpected,” Howe explains. “I began layering artificially colored light with ambient and natural light, curious about how these mingled wavelengths might corrupt or clarify an object’s appearance. What happens when the theoretical meets the real? When the laws of optics collide with the slipperiness of human perception? Where does perception end and cognition begin?”
His experiments revealed color to be fluid—a negotiation between light, mind, and memory. His photographs do not simply document; they propose, question, and subvert assumptions.
The Reef
1933 S. Broadway
Downtown Los Angeles, 90007
www.curatorial.com
