OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, September 2nd, 6-9pm
Elizabeth Williams takes pictures of pictures, capturing the layers of visual communication that fill urban environments around the world. Taken with a point-and-shoot camera on the streets of Berkeley, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Izmir, and Barcelona, these images fall into a tradition of street photography, which can capture a fleeting right-place-at-the-right-time moment. But unlike many journalistic photographers, Elizabeth is walking the streets with an artist’s eye, looking for formal moments where the color, shapes, and compositions of our already highly-designed world begin in coalesce into a new image.
Her work has a playful pop aesthetic, but at the heart of it is a serious investigation into the space between reality and representation, and photography’s unique status as a tool that represents what is ‘real’ (even if what is real is a representation). Endless layers of irony characterize her work, which uses juxtaposition, comparison, and contrast to involve the viewer in a game of reading signs and symbols, which may ultimately remain ambiguous, but in the meantime delight with the pure pleasure of engaged looking.
GALLERY HOURS: Friday & Saturday, 12-5pm
Tuesday-Thursday, by appointment
