Will Douglas

Will Douglas studied at VCUarts where he received a BFA in Photography and Film. In 2011 he was a recipient of a VMFA undergraduate fellowship. In 2015 he was included in the ReviewSanta Fe 100 and awarded emerging talent in lenculture’s top 50. Since then has been included in various important exhibitions including Skyway Contemporary at The Tampa Museum of Art and Peripheral Vision at Candela. This year he is featured as one the of the artist in the Annuale X at the light Factory in Charlotte, NC . He received his MFA in Studio Art at the University of South Florida where he was a graduate fellow, recently he received a Lenscrath student award and a SPE Student Award for Innovations in Imaging.

untitled_2016

palm

South of the Border

even a hawk is an eagle amongst crows

In even an eagle is a hawk amongst crows I have recently been photographing cars, flowers, and landscapes around the world. Both the flower and the car are commodities which are signs of social and economic classes. They also speak of desire and how we identify and communicate with others. Through my expanded photographic production, I use photography and sculpture to create installations that poetically evoke a feeling of mystery in the gallery. I find myself photographing car crashes, broken windows or failed mechanisms on the vehicle. Like my interest in car crashes, I am also interested in the crash of an economy. I use this influence as a metaphor for our political and economic situation. I am using the form of photography against the myth. To create a rift between the form and content. I use flowers to represent locations. Instead of being explanatory the photographs only show flowers. The title becomes an important way of contextualizing the photograph, of making the picture a portrait of a place. I use titles to create contextual or conceptual connection. For example, US_Mexico Border the underscore in this title functions visually as a symbolic reference to the relationship between the United States and Mexico at the time this photo was taken. In my practice, I am attempting to denature the clichés taken repeatedly by anonymous photographers all over the world. I am drawn towards, making images that seem familiar or that reference every other image that has been taken of a subject, but through my own subjective lens, I hope to render the familiar strange again. I want my images to evoke the sense that you have seen them before but somehow everything has changed; like seeing an ex-lover from whom you have moved on.

US_Mexico Border