David Hilliard's vibrant color photographs, usually triptychs or larger compositions, present elaborate narratives exploring a range of themes and situations, from the awkwardness of adolescence to masculinity disarmed. Formally, these staged photographs share the style of contemporary photographers like Gregory Crewdson and Anna Gaskell, among others. Yet Hilliard draws less from the realm of the fantastic and instead looks to his immediate surroundings to draw inspiration, as he deftly fuses autobiography with fiction to engage a host of complex ideas. This lush monograph is the first major publication of Hilliard's work. Included are works from the artist's ongoing series of his father that demonstrate Hilliard's ability to tangle fact with fiction as the resulting images, underscored by the artist's wry outlook on the world, convey a distinct poignancy. Other works engage issues of intimacy, homoeroticism, and identity. The resulting scenes are as often elegiac as they are comical, always orchestrated with precision, and with a marriage of form and content that work together to immerse the viewer in the visual narrative.
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Editorial Reviews
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Although interested in visual narrative, Hilliard found cinema too uncontrollable. He defaulted to the form on view in this album, roughly twice as wide as it is high. He adapts a practice of his factory-worker father, who made landscapes with images snapped in horizontal sequence that he mounted, overlapped, as panoramas. The son creates works with narrative implications; they are composed of two to seven images, are mostly horizontal, and are juxtaposed rather than overlapped. Some preteen boys wade and swim in a shallow stream; in the next frame, one boy sits on the bank, back to the camera; in the last, bikes lie on the opposite bank. Curve of stream unites the images, and central placement of the lone figure teases interpretation: did something isolate him from the others? Radiant color artfully diffused suggests narrative pre-Impressionist paintings like those of Manet. Hilliard's gay sensibility surfaces occasionally, as when a naked young man bends to kiss another lying on a bed, but so does heterosexuality. The time is always summer and the possibilities are nearly endless in Hilliard's marvelously inviting pictures. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"These photographs expose the distance Hilliard feels from his working class roots, while at the same time highlighting the intimacy that exists between a gay son and his blue-collar father. The result isn't a traditional panorama, but it is a familiar one." -- Fiorella Valdesolo --Nylon Magazine
"This lush, beautifully constructed monograph is in an exaggerated landscape format that complements his use of multiple frames to create panoramic, yet segmented, narratives primarily working with the theme of masculinity. These are super saturated images that project desire." --HotShoe International
"Hilliard's panoramic photographs, composed of various single images, depict quiet, mundane scenes in a deliberately cinematic format. Manipulating perspective and focal length, his sequential narratives are intimate and familiar yet deliberately constructed." --The Village Voice
"The book features more than 75 pages of Hilliard's powerful, color, fine-art images dealing with homosexuality, the awkwardness of adolescence, and his relationship with his father. Hilliard's intriguing use of triptychs to develop narratives and themes is well presented in this over-sized publication of the 40 year-old's work." --Photo District News
"In these poignant colour photographs, such as the artist's ongoing series documenting his father's daily existence, intimate details resound with a powerful universal significance." -- Rebecca Wilson --Art Review UK
"This lush, beautifully constructed monograph is in an exaggerated landscape format that complements his use of multiple frames to create panoramic, yet segmented, narratives primarily working with the theme of masculinity. These are super saturated images that project desire." --HotShoe International
"Hilliard's panoramic photographs, composed of various single images, depict quiet, mundane scenes in a deliberately cinematic format. Manipulating perspective and focal length, his sequential narratives are intimate and familiar yet deliberately constructed." --The Village Voice
"The book features more than 75 pages of Hilliard's powerful, color, fine-art images dealing with homosexuality, the awkwardness of adolescence, and his relationship with his father. Hilliard's intriguing use of triptychs to develop narratives and themes is well presented in this over-sized publication of the 40 year-old's work." --Photo District News
"In these poignant colour photographs, such as the artist's ongoing series documenting his father's daily existence, intimate details resound with a powerful universal significance." -- Rebecca Wilson --Art Review UK
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Men with the Blue Bird Tattoos,
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This review is from: David Hilliard (Hardcover)
In David Hilliard's book of photographs, multi-panel panoramic tableaux rhythmically flow page after page in lustrous color inducing a sense of fantasy throughout his autobiographical narratives. The long horizontal layout of the book is not only beautiful, but appropriate for the format of Hilliard's work; each page is loaded with formal mysteries as the images dance into and out of each other. Hilliard's use of multiple connecting frames is inspired by the panoramic landscape photographs taken by his father when Hilliard was a child. The relationship between father and son is an important connection throughout Hilliard's series, and allusions to the past are dominant themes in his work. The segmented photographic frames create a tension that fragments each narrative and introduces elements of time, fantasy, and chance within each sequence. Hilliard's narratives draw from real life experience and are easily relatable because they represent situations everyone has encountered in their lifetime, whether they are sixteen or sixty.
The images in the book are supplemented with a short essay by Charlotte Cotton, and an interview with David Hilliard and Vince Alleti. Hilliard's kind and genuine character is exposed as he discusses his work and the experiences that guided his interests to where they are. The conversations between Hilliard and Alleti travel back to the uncomfortable time in a teenager's life when they realize they aren't like everyone else, and Hilliard's photographs are suggestive of those revelations. Hilliard's photographic book is approachable on all levels and guides viewers through his life, while providing them an opportunity to see themselves in these poignant narratives.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful Narrative,
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This review is from: David Hilliard (Hardcover)
Beautiful compositions, wonderful narratives, and exquisite colors draw you into Hilliard's world that is always seductive and intriguing.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Jean-Paul's opinion,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: David Hilliard (Hardcover)
I have seen in Paris the David Hilliard's beautiful exhibition. The book is very close to the pictures shown in the gallery.
So it was agreat pleasure to buy the book. Thanks. Jean-Paul Bourgeau
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