Sunday, April 25, 2010

PLASTIC FOREST | NYT OP-ART

AIB alumn Bryan Graf was recently featured in the New York Times OP-ART.


From the sereies Roadside Wildflowers
Photographs copyright Bryan Graf

These are photographs of plastic bags that I pulled from trees and shrubs in the woods near my home in New Jersey. To make these pictures — photograms — I took the bags into my darkroom and gently dropped them between my enlarger’s lens and a piece of light-sensitive paper. I then illuminated the scene with a flash of light for less than a second. The resulting images trace the objects gliding in the air moments before they come to rest. Like Earth Day, they are for me a prompt to reflect on the relationship — sometimes vexed, sometimes beautiful, always complicated — between humankind and nature.

BRYAN GRAF