Synthesis

Gerald Edwards III

Gerald Edwards III was born in 1985 in Daytona Beach, FL. The Brooklyn-based artist studied at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Edwards has worked with the collective Visual Buffet and has mentored under photographer Gregory Crewdson since 2004. His work deals with the reconstruction and fabrication of histories through composited large-format photographs and sculptural elements. He has exhibited in the United States, Canada, Japan, and Europe [flavorpill]. His series Bellum (Hotel City) I find particularly beautiful. The project description from Edwards site:

“The southern states of America function between a dichotomy of myth and the unctuous reality of land and people soaked with history and tradition. This history and tradition is controversial at best to the onlookers of this region, but make no mistake about it, there are good people down there just trying to live a good life. Life slides a little closer to myth everyday, with the encroachment of homogenized corporate culture on the good people of America, not only the south, the unique simplicity and natural beauty of the land and people is quickly disappearing. This modernization only makes larger the mythic past of the southern culture. These images tell the story of one such place in the south, the people still value story, and the buildings still have some individuality, it’s not a perfect place by any means, but it does exist. There is however no sentimentiality in the description of this land, but then again everywhere has their own problems.
The photographs are largely indebted to a tradition of 1970′s color photography, and certainly mines some of the pivotal fundamental formal, and societal questions that were asked during that period. Many of these issues seem to have arisen again in our post-millenial communities. Fundamentally, the work is about community, be it a concrete pshyically geocentric model, or perhaps one that uses visual metaphor to address the larger issues of the middle class and its daily coping with America’s shifting economic structure.”

There is a  good interview on feature shoot on his series Psych Securities, LLC. Some further reading on too much chocolate.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 4:26 pm. It is filed under art, photography and tagged with gerald edwards III. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.