David Knox: Ritual and Ruin
November 28 – December 29, 2018
Opening: Saturday, Dec 1, 5:30-8pm
For PhotoNOLA 2018, Cole Pratt Gallery features a solo exhibition of David Knox‘s recent work.
STATEMENT
These photomontages depict an arcane netherworld set somewhere in the mid19th century American South. Created in the realm of historical fiction, they weave together the disparate, war-ravaged lives of soldiers, civilians, women, children, slaves, freedmen, and animals. These ghostly characters, suspended in a strange afterlife, remain disconnected from the particulars of history.
In creating these montages I combine selected elements from historical images with my own photography. Each piece contains approximately one hundred layers which are digitally sized, blended and collaged into a single, large scale image.
The inhabitants of this mysterious underworld, in ritual and in ruin, gather to celebrate, glorify, exalt and mourn while holding onto hope for their own resurrection and escape. Created from three centuries of photography, this work explores a region that remains, in part, unwontedly bound to yesterday – a place whose present is as peculiar and as haunted as its past. – David Knox
