A Carnival Of Mimics

Description

A Carnival of Mimics is a new photo essay from acclaimed photographer and art critic Max Kozloff. A street photographer on the lookout for miscellaneous piquancies, Kozloff gradually became aware that commercial effigies and statues, dummies and mannequins had begun to infiltrate his urban subject matter. He had accidentally documented a large selection of incredibly expressive naive sculpture. Underfoot or overhead, these "mimics" comprise a subpopulation that begs for notice and often does not get it. Somewhere in the realm between banal and mysterious, in his hands this animistic spectacle acquires eerie overtones and beautiful presentation. A Carnival of Mimics is a late-career masterpiece, from one of modern photography's most important minds.

Max Kozloff (b. 1933) is a prolific and influential art critic who was Executive Editor of Artforum in the mid 1970s. His many books about photography include The Theatre of the Face: Portrait Photography Since 1900, Phaidon, 2007; Now Becoming Then, a monograph on Duane Michals, Twin Palms Publishers, 1990; and an artist's book of his own work, New York Over the Top, Contrasto, 2013. Additionally, he has been awarded many prizes and honors including a Guggenheim, Fulbright, and NEA.

"There is an artistic endeavor here-it is no easy task to assemble something cogent out of the work one has left behind-but also a philosophical one: It provides the chance to sit for a moment with an image and ask ourselves if we are what we write, or what we paint, or what we build, or if-when we can leave such traces of ourselves-if we are, or need be at all." -- B.A. Van Sise * New York Journal of Books * "This new work, a documentation of the invasion of statues, dummies, mannequins into Kozloff's urban street photography, looks back at you as you look into the lifeless eyes of the figures on the pages." -- Nate Rynaski * Flaunt Magazine *