josef chladek

on photobooks and books

Aaron McElroy - After Wake, Ampersand Gallery & Fine Books, 2013, New York

After Wake is a collection of visual fragments & anonymous female subjects from the artist’s daily life. Separated from the minutia of McElroy’s lived reality, however, the photographs also allow for an endless drift of fictitious suggestion & voyeurism. After Wake can be a half-alert morning recollection of disjointed dreams. Or it's a catalog of contradictory eyewitness accounts. It may also be selections from the visual diaries & detritus of a life-long peeping tom. Perhaps it's a snapshot paper trail of lovely women from a savant's poetic thoughts. Or it's the happy Saturday memories of two lovers, tinged by the banal possessions of a soiled suburban life. It may also be something like the outtakes from a B movie chronicling pleasure, grotesque beauty, infidelity, addiction, abuse & redemption. In short, After Wake is a collection of provoking photographs by McElory that eschews concept & meaning in favor of imagination & a stream of inchoate ideas.

Softcover, edition of 100, 20 signed & numbered copies include one of four signed 5x7 inch photographs by the artist.

Pages: 94
Place: New York
Year: 2013
Publisher: Ampersand Gallery & Fine Books
Size: 15 x 20 cm (approx.)