Lincoln in the French Quarter

Comment

Comment by James MacMahon on September 13, 2015 at 10:48pm

Thanks Kristen your insights mean a lot. In the end art is the result of thousands of mundane moves and marks guided by divine madness. For this photograph I was standing on Royal street looking into an art gallery. The image of Lincoln is inside the gallery. I wanted to photograph Lincoln and get the reflections on the gallery front glass. Everything in this photo (including me) is a reflection, except Lincoln. It took 6 shots to get it. I spent all afternoon photoing reflections.

Comment by Resident Curator on September 5, 2015 at 9:41am

Curator’s Comments:   

 

I’ve come to admire and anticipate the edginess in your multifaceted pieces, which traverse media while arriving at a signature emblematic unease.  Lincoln in the French Quarter is no exception.  There’s an irony to the scale of what looks to be a video projection; a monumental apparition looming over the mundane.  Of course there could also be inherent political associations with ethics, media and race when we remember and contemplate natural disaster in New Orleans and following government response.  The darker blurred portrait in the foreground (self portrait?) adds another layer of pictorial information.  It breaks up the picture plane and draws the eye away from the dominant presidential portrait.  But aside from balancing the visual weight in the composition, it also interjects another figure into the visual narrative.  Positioned lower than Lincoln, the man is ‘everyman’, or quiet citizen observer.  As the eyes are visible in this figure and yet cropped in Lincoln’s there’s also the implication and association with consciousness and awareness.  Lincoln becomes a blind overseer, or powerless guardian to the scene passing below. (Please check out the ‘blind Lincoln’ I posted on the site.)