Alternative Facts:
Terry Fullerton

Terry Fullerton

Alternative Facts: Photography by Any Means
Artist Statement, 2021

The snapshot is photography at its most innocent. Yet the photographic trace of a friend or loved one carries a significant existential weight. What then is the currency of a stranger?

I collect vintage snapshots and formal portraits, the ones left behind that have become a commodity. There is a search for what Roland Barthes refers to as “that has been.” “Death” he says, “is the eidos (essential nature) of the photograph.” They are embedded with issues of mortality, memory and nostalgia.

Among the most interesting of insights provided by these photographs is the universality of our history; you did yesterday what I do today. We find patterns and insights- or at least look for them. It is the search for meaning, from self-definition to the human condition that draws us in.

Along with the collected photographs, objects, words, drawing, present day digital images are combined. They act as memorials and totemic offerings and hint at the illusion of the three-dimensional adding shadow and depth to the long past moment.

On display March 1 – April 12, 2021 at the PACE Center Art Gallery:

Photograph by Terry Fullerton

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