Adam Whyte (b. 1994, Paterson NJ) is a photographer and designer currently based in New York. He graduated from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, where his studies centered around philosophy, critical theory and new media art. The bulk of his work explores tropes of romanticism and the representation of place, identity, and the ephemeral in a post-internet context. He is interested in the conditions in which images are made, presented, and perceived – the situational and the subjective. After graduating in December, Adam returned to New York and spent time traveling between Chicago and San Francisco. The photographs taken during this four-month period have resulted in his new ongoing project, “Lucid.”
Lucid
My ongoing series, Lucid, sort of emerged unintentionally – I was fresh out of academia, had just moved to New York, and was traveling a bunch. I was trying to figure out a new “place” for me in the world after finishing up my studies and moving out of the Pacific Northwest, and didn’t have a legitimate direction with my work at the time. After a while, I began to notice that there was a huge shift in my creative process that happened with the move. Olympia, Washington is a very provincial town – detached from much of today’s fast-paced, neoliberal society. It gave me the ability to really sit down and think- about my work, ideas, the world. I was able to put together my last body of work, Evergreen Dazed, with a lot of time for reflection. I made photographs that were more contemplative, introspective, intimate, and pointed towards a premeditated set of ideas. After moving to New York and starting to travel again, I picked up my old point and shoot camera and began using it regularly, carrying it around everywhere. The images that make up Lucid are much more immediate, improvisational, intuitive, busy; and perhaps in that way, more personal than my previous work. Their stark, saturated, almost frenetic compositions mirror my rediscovery of the urban landscape in a romanticized, abstracted light.
To view more of Adam Whyte’s work please visit his website.