The project "Unmade Beds" by Joseph Gerhard.
There is an intimacy to an unmade bed that makes a photograph of a stranger's bed both immediately familiar and vaguely transgressive. This project began with a photograph of my own bed, taken just after my wife and I climbed out of it one morning, which I titled "Self-Portrait". It has always seemed to me that there is something evocative about an unmade bed; something of a portrait by proxy of the person who had just slept there. I see in these images palimpsests of the sleepers.
These photographs are, in a sense, portraits of absence.
anil
annetta
charlie
dana
jenny
jody
pretty sue
dan
robbie & theresa
By: Joseph Gerhard (USA)
I first got interested in photography back in the early 1970's, influenced mostly by photographers like Harry Callahan, Minor White and Emmet Gowin. I gave up photography in favor of painting in the 80's and 90's, but have been gradually coming back to where I started.
What interests me most are small, quiet moments of clarity - the kind of moment when something mundane is seen vividly, as if for the first time. For me, the impulse to make a photograph almost always begins with that kind of a moment. It almost never begins with an idea.
I still work almost exclusively in film - both black & white and color - in both medium format and 35mm.
Some of these photographs first appeared in Brink Magazine.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
Copyright ©Joseph Gerhard, All rights reserved. This photo is not to be used as free stock.
Use without written consent by the author (Joseph Gerhard) is illegal and punishable by law.
