David Armstrong: Portraits Review

Artists Space

David Armstrong: Portraits

David Armstrong is a well-renowned photographer in any educational photography program. It was amazing to finally be able to see their work in person. It was really interesting to see how the exhibition was sequenced on the wall, where there seemed to be a clear distinction between the styles of the work. By this, I mean how the black and white prints were printed and framed more traditionally, with the black film bordered prints put into a white-framed shadow box, highlighting the materiality of the prints. This varied greatly from some of the other color prints, which had really massive black borders reaching back to the frame. For most of the exhibition, these forms of display were installed in the traditional manner of a straight line, semi-seperated by style, except for one wall. This one wall had all of these projects merged together, tacked to the wall in a really interesting way, creating a new way to interpret the work. This modern salon style hang started to resemble open image files on a desktop or some of the new photobooks of Vince Aletti’s archive, such as The Drawer. Together, the collage starts to change the focus of the people in the images into a collection forming an archive on queer existence. The range in printing style creates a visual timeline for audiences that may not be aware of the advancements of the artist's works, building a larger conversation of queer existence

    - Lewis James