Photography has changed. . The internet has blurred the distinctions between mediums. newspapers, television, and film are now seen within reference to the new mass medium. . We have reached a time when producers outnumber consumers, artists outnumber audiences. . With the advent of the blog, Facebook, image and video sharing websites etc., one can see so obviously now that the truth is no longer relegated to a single point of view. . What does this mean for photography, or more so, for us photographers?

The couplings in this show include images I have taken, collected, stolen and even manipulated. . Each image or pair of images, act as a probe, intended to evoke more questions than to illustrate any particular ideology or point of view.

In Double Self portrait (2008), I turned the camera on, not only myself but, on another individual as well who was often mistaken for me (and I for him). . Photographing the two of us in the same setting and juxtaposing the images seemed to acknowledge the "other" in a very potent way. . It was something I became concerned with for some time before actually taking the image. . This banal phenomenon of one person being mistaken for another was significant. . I may not be as individual as I think I am. . It made me concerned with the presentation of oneself through images and with the world of images lingering in the fast moving digital metaverse of the Internet.

The image of the whale, Untitled (2009), signifies a different approach while hinting at the uncanny notions infused in the double self portrait. . The image is the product of my desire to make large iconic images, but since I am rarely obliged by fate to be present during such magnificently tragic moments I decided to make it myself. . The photo editing software that exists today grants photographers the authority of manipulation; some use it to its limits. . Since there are no objective ethics in the act of photography, I granted myself the authority to retranslate an image. . I constructed the image of the beached whale by simply searching for the photograph I needed and erasing what was necessary to fulfill my aesthetic taste. . I printed it large, allowing this tiny breathless piece of information to resonate. . Echoing the process of internet viewing, zooming in on the image offers less information than standing afar. . The details are lost. . The image still contains some point of truth but is wholly fabricated, still managing, though, to generate an archetypal truth from the digital residue. . I am not sure if this image has ever existed in the corporeal world (as a print, in print) but the act of intervention has become significant in making it a physical object to be assessed in actual space.

My concerns with photography are its abilities, in the past and present, to shift and mold perception-- both of self and of the outside world. . It has always had a certain authority over the truth; the single frame was so important to many of the great patrons of photography. . But this authority has always been transient. . Like the millions of contact sheets that have gone unseen, editing has been the artists authority. . A slave to his gluttonous eye, his control came after his pictures were snapped, with the light box, in the darkroom. . With the moment extracted, truth was worked to its aesthetic perfection. This was an analog world. . Machines and chemicals were necessary, truth came after a linear process. . These lines no longer exist, but photography has been prophesizing its own death since the first fading print. . Susan Sontag spoke of every photograph being momento mori. . There was humor and irony involved in every capture of the mortal, significant subject on the flat, rectangular piece of paper. Both will be gone once time catches up. . Photography has always been so human in its attempts. . The digital world emphasizes a new fluid view of these old models.

Richard Yanas
September, 2009