Part of my practice involves an ongoing series of photographs documenting my encounters with covered or concealed objects. Shift Shape began its life as a photograph taken on the street of a vendor’s table covered by a blanket. It’s seemingly mundane moments like these that often catch my attention and spark my imagination. I, along with millions of other pedestrians, regularly walk past such tables that populate New York City sidewalks. Most of these mobile mini-stores sell the same kind of cheap merchandise—cell phone covers, sunglasses, scarves—to the point where they nearly disappear because they are seemingly all the same. But if a wind or rain comes along, and a covering goes over one of those tables, it becomes a unique and mysterious structure, hiding wares that I know are familiar, but are all the more intriguing because my access to them has been restricted.
Hood also began as an image from this collection. As I walked through the Lower East Side of Manhattan, I happened upon a humorous scene of a small towel draped over a pole, set out to dry in the midday sun. But once I isolated the towel from it’s surroundings, the image became far less humorous. It began to resemble a figural representation—a head veiled—that conjured up multiple associations; some of which were dark and disturbing. The anthropomorphized object has long been a fascination of mine. The strange tendency that we posses as humans to give character to inanimate objects, despite knowing better, allows us to question ourselves, our beliefs, and what we consider our reality.
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James Brendan Williams
173 W 81st Street
5E
10024
New York, NY
New York
North America
T:
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M: 1 415 706 3246
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Paper mounted to board, wood, mesh fabric, paint
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