Untitled (Conflation)

Ben Alper Photography | 2019   Ben Alper's series "Conflation" is a series of digital composites that originate from multiple images of the same object or space. Depicting marginal or derelict urban sites, the pictures represent a patchwork of decisions made behind the camera. While these pieces upend traditional notions of the singular photographic trace, they nevertheless constitute a series of imprints.  They attempt to synthesize redundant, often ordinary photographs into something transcendent.  By layering, erasing and cutting away to reveal information below, these hybrid works vacillate between presence and absence and construction and deconstruction. Stepping away from the medium’s subtractive character, the pieces in “Conflation” turn toward an additive approach to image-construction.  However, with each accumulated layer, a new kind of collapse occurs.  The result is a formal and conceptual flattening, a tangle of images still tethered to their source, but fundamentally changed. Size 24 x 16" - Unframed    Materials Pigment print Edition of 3 Authenticity Signed by the artist