The Photography of Julie Blackmon and Elliott Erwitt

From the venue:

Contemporary American photographer Julie Blackmon draws inspiration from the raucous tavern scenes of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish painters, creating photographs based around the people and places in her small community. Blackmon has compared her surroundings to a giant Hollywood prop closet, where a Starbucks employee out on a smoke break may appear in her next photograph, or the beauty shop she passes every day becomes the setting for a new piece. “It’s a fun perspective to have ... to see the world around you as a potential story or idea. It changes how you see things. Nora Ephron said, ‘everything is copy,’ and that has really stayed with me. I live and work in a generic town, with a generic name, in the middle of America, in the middle of nowhere... but the stories unfolding around me are endless.”

Blackmon’s work serves as a mash-up of pop phenomena, consumer culture, and social satire. Taking its name from the 2022 photograph “Metaverse,” which depicts a hectic household scene unfolding around a toddler clad in a virtual reality headset, Jackson Fine Art’s exhibition follows Blackmon’s trajectory of incorporating the cultural signifiers of the present moment into touching domestic tableaus.