DAILY PHOTOS (2009)
Previous Shows
Sarah Best: Daily Photos was shown at Antena Gallery in Pilsen, Chicago, in February 2010 and at Paper Boy in Lakeview, Chicago, in May 2010.
Artist Statement
Shot almost exclusively with a cell phone camera, Daily Photos captures people in my circle of friends and acquaintances–artists and writers, musicians and dance artists, and avid cyclists–and puts the viewer in a position where he or she feels like an intimate equal. Other images –layered, painterly, and abstract–are a physical response to my environment. Multiple shots of the same subject create the sense of approaching, circling, or passing something, and crystallize the feeling of being in real space and time.
Two points of inspiration for this project are Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems (1964), which capture fleeting moments in a conversational tone that can belie the poem’s underlying formal structure, and Robert Mapplethorpe’s Polaroids (1970-75), which are similarly intimate and immediate.
The cell phone camera, which produces images that can be viewed and shared instantaneously, but which are necessarily limited and flawed, is the contemporary equivalent of the Polaroid camera.
The emotion, mood, and even texture in a photo taken on a cell phone would be no small task, and an impossible one for someone lacking the talent Best no doubt has in spades–an eye for a moment. Hers is an eye always open and a finger always on the trigger. — Carrie McGath, Chicago Art Magazine
Two points of inspiration for this project are Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems (1964), which capture fleeting moments in a conversational tone that can belie the poem’s underlying formal structure, and Robert Mapplethorpe’s Polaroids (1970-75), which are similarly intimate and immediate.
The cell phone camera, which produces images that can be viewed and shared instantaneously, but which are necessarily limited and flawed, is the contemporary equivalent of the Polaroid camera.
The emotion, mood, and even texture in a photo taken on a cell phone would be no small task, and an impossible one for someone lacking the talent Best no doubt has in spades–an eye for a moment. Hers is an eye always open and a finger always on the trigger. — Carrie McGath, Chicago Art Magazine
Press
- “Pondering the Universe at Antena Gallery.” Review. Carrie McGath, Chicago Art Magazine (blog).
- “Pocket Pix: Chicago Area Photogs use iPhone camera, applications for art.” Hermine Bloom, Columbia Chronicle.
- “In an Instant.” Emily Reimer, University of Chicago Magazine (blog).
- “Top 5 Weekend Picks“. Stephanie Burke, Bad at Sports.
- “Five Things to Do on February 19,” Time Out Chicago (blog).
- “Cell Phone Photography is SO 2010.” Kelly Reaves, Gapers Block A/C.
With Many Thanks To
Debbie & Howard Best, Andy Best, Mark Wilson, Bryan Saner, Irène Hodes, Ira Murfin, Richard Fox, Eric Bork, Thon Lorenz, David Schalliol, Brock Rumer, Nell Taylor, Anne Holub, Zachary Whittenberg, Ira Murfin, Asimina Chremos, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Georgina Valverde, Eric Brasure, Brent Wegscheid, Sage Reed, Leo Rodriguez, Joanna Lakatos, Danielle Kleinenberg, and Miguel Cortez.