The creation of seamless illusion remains a driving tenet of Hollywood cinema. In order to preserve this illusion, it is crucial that there are no jarring disruptions of cinematic space and time. This preservation of order is called continuity, and it has been the focus of John Divola's photographic work for the past several years, as beautifully represented in this striking book. Divola takes the original still photographs he has collected of Warner Bros. film sets from the 1930s, which were used to maintain continuity, and creates haunting installations of fictive reality. Divided into subject categories such as "Hallways" and "Broken Furniture and Evidence of Aggression," these images possess a glorious beauty, made possible by the use of 8 x 10 negatives, while being grounded in an intelligence found in the best of conceptual art. Features an elucidating essay by the noted film writer and critic Edward Dimendberg.

Continuity (Smart Art Press (Series), V. III, No. 34)

Arts & Photography

John Divola

Edward Dimendberg

Theresa Luisotti

Photography & Video

Ram Publications

'From 1995 to 1998, I worked on a series of photographs of isolated houses in the desert at the east-end of the Morongo Valley in Southern California. As I meandered through the desert, a dog would occasionally chase my car. Sometime in 1996 I began to bring along a 35mm camera equipped with a motor drive and loaded with a fast and grainy black-and-white film. The process was simple; when I saw a dog coming toward the car I would pre-focus the camera and set the exposure. With one hand on the steering wheel, I would hold the camera out the window and expose anywhere from a few frames to a complete roll of film. I'll admit that I was not above turning around and taking a second pass in front of a house with an enthusiastic dog. Contemplating a dog chasing a car invites any number of metaphors and juxtapositions: culture and nature, the domestic and the wild, love and hate, joy and fear, the heroic and the idiotic. It could be viewed as a visceral and kinetic dance. Here we have two vectors and velocities, that of a dog and that of a car and, seeing that a camera will never capture reality and that a dog will never catch a car, evidence of devotion to a hopeless enterprise.' - John Divola

Dogs Chasing My Car in the Desert

Nazraeli Press

Between 1974 and 1975, the American photographer John Divola - then in his mid twenties and without a studio of his own - travelled across Los Angeles in search of dilapidated properties in which to make photographs. Armed with a camera, spray paint, string and cardboard, the artist would produce one of his most significant photographic projects entitled Vandalism. In this visceral, black and white series of images Divola vandalised vacant homes with abstract constellations of graffiti-like marks, ritualistic configurations of string hooked to pins, and torn arrangements of card, before cataloguing the results. The project vigorously merged the documentary approach of forensic photography with staged interventions echoing performance, sculpture and installation art. Serving as a conceptual sabotaging of the delineations between such documentary and artistic practices, at a time when the 'truthfulness' of photography was being called into question, Vandalism helped to establish Divola's highly distinctive photographic language.

Vandalism

MACK BOOKS

Depuis 2015, John Divola réalise des projets photographiques dans un complexe résidentiel abandonné de l'armée de l'air à Victorville, en Californie. En intervenant dans les intérieurs désaffectés des bâtiments avec de la peinture en aérosol puis en photographiant les scènes modifiées, Divola crée une œuvre qui se situe à un moment fascinant de la photographie, de la sculpture et de l'installation. Les images dans Terminus, regardez les couloirs abandonnés vers des formes sombres que Divola a peintes à leurs extrémités. À travers des couches de peinture, de poussière et de plâtre, ils exercent une attraction indéniable sur le spectateur, suggérant à la fois les forces déterministes du destin et la possibilité d’une rupture et de l'évasion. Poursuivant l'expérimentation conceptuelle qui a défini l'œuvre de Divola, Terminus capte une tension entre l'observation du spécifique et l'insistance de l'abstrait. Ce sont de vrais lieux, tournés à la lumière disponible du petit matin, mais modifiés par les obscurs hiéroglyphes de Divola, ils sont vivants avec des suggestions de symbolisme et de fiction. Les détails nets témoignent de l'abandon et de la disparition de scènes à moitié familières alors même qu'elles les transfigurent en arènes scéniques pour l'idéation. Dans les espaces de transition de ces passages, nous voyageons toujours et n'arrivons jamais, pris entre les courants de marée de l'histoire et de la spéculation. John Divola (né en 1949, Los Angeles) travaille principalement avec la photographie et l'imagerie numérique. Alors qu'il s'est approché d’une large éventail de sujets, il se déplace actuellement à travers le paysage à la recherche du bord oscillant entre l'abstrait et le spécifique. Divola a enseigné la photographie et l'art dans de nombreuses institutions, dont le California Institute of the Arts (1978-1988) et il est professeur d'art à l'Université de Californie à Riverside depuis 1988. Le travail de Divola a été présenté dans plus de 80 expositions personnelles et 200 expositions collectives à travers le monde, et il a reçu de nombreux prix et bourses. Les titres récemment publiés incluent The Green of This Notebook (Nazraeli Press, 2009), As Far As I Could Get (Prestel, 2013) et Vandalism (MACK, 2018).

TERMINUS

CHROMA

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Books by John Divola