“Photographing places particularly hard hit by the transition from an industrial and agrarian economy to an economy of unfettered consumption on the margins of mainstream society is a story I feel compelled to tell.”
The way Parks presents his subjects, with so much affection and clarity, we feel that we love them, and this brings home the realities of fear and injustice in a new and powerful manner.
This exhibition highlights “third spaces”: components of an area’s social infrastructure, communal spaces outside of home and work such as taverns, church picnics, diners, restaurants, and movie theaters—sites where we might gather, if we could agree.
This craftsman, as he likes to define himself, photographer and shooter, freezes a free and wild nature with the sandstone of his wanderings across the continents. Then he returned it on paper with coffee toning, complex emulsions and rare treatments.
The rediscovery of an old film by Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler inspired me to watch the view every morning with anticipation. Sometimes the old, dirty windows in the office further embellished the buildings with new and ethereal qualities of light. Each day, the weather and changing seasons brought a new discovery to what I was witnessing.
Patrick Joust’s urban photography seems to capture a moment between night and day and a place between spaces humans have made.
A meditation on hate-based violence.
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