Kriston writes good stuff about art and sometimes about Texas. I was just looking at this post (and this shorter, earlier one) about art in/and/outside of Texas, apropos of Turner-prize winner and ArtPace alumnus Jeremy Deller.
Kriston writes
I'm as fascinated as those voyeur Brits by this stuff, but because I lived in Texas for years, I know that an accurate pictorial presentation would involve a lot of pictures of Staples, Chile's, Walmarts and what have you, suburban housing subdivisions, cacti and mesquite. Pretty dull. For the kind of quasi-photojournalistic art Deller practices, the urge to take exciting photographs of interesting stuff competes with a certain obligation to accurately describe what is primarily homogenous and boring. (I think so, anyway, though let me admit that I'm not well versed on the ethics of photography.)
Even after ten years here (nearly. Yipes.), I feel exactly this everytime I see pictures of Texas. I suspect it's the same in any place, anywhere in the world. And I suppose, too, that images of Texas that are expressly banal can be made pretty (I use the word advisedly). See Mike Osborne's photo series of interchanges, for example (I can't find Mike's work online for some reason, just this one from our show last summer), this, this, and this, or maybe Brian Bowers' pictures of West Texas. Texas through the eyes of Texans.
(I got a nod at the end of that post, which was nice. I wasn't sure anyone'd read my essay except the parties involved.)
Posted by Heather at January 11, 2005 04:12 PM
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