The Invented Camera
Jo Babcock
"Repurposing a (usually) manufactured object aligns Babcock on the one hand, with Warhol and his Brillo boxes … but, in contrast to the Pop master, Babcock reintroduces his creations to the world as a new kind of functional object - a representation that now makes representations." (from the essay by Douglas R. Nickel, director for the Center for Creative Photography)
"Resolutely low-tech but conceptually adroit, the images he produces have a raw, antique sometime "terrible" beauty." (from the introduction by Bill Berkson, poet, art critic, teacher, curator)
96 pages, color and b/w hardbound
$19.95
About Jo Babcock
Some Information
Jo Babcock was born in 1954
in St. Louis, and graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute (BFA
1976, MFA 1979). Since 1977, Babcock has experimented prodigiously with
pinhole cameras and other handmade "low-tech" devices. He has
created cameras out of an array of objects including suitcases, MSG cans,
a guitar case, a Shinola tin, a VW bus and a classic Airstream motorhome,
to produce both small and mural scale photographs. His one-of-a-kind paper
negatives are distinctive for their distortion of form and color. Babcock's
imagery of landscapes is transformed by his process into an eerie, painterly
world of emotional dreamscapes and startling familiarity. Jo Babcock's
work has been exhibited internationally, including exhibitions at the
Brooklyn Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Alternative
Museum, the Center for the Arts at Yerba Buena Gardens, and the Sao Paulo
Bienal.
