DeCordova Collects Photographs: Recent Acquisitions
Tod Papageorge
With a crisp, consciously photographic style, Tod Papageorge captures scenes of the urban every-day. Elements of his work may be traced to the Street Photography tradition of Walker Evans and Robert Frank. But Papageorge does not endeavor to create images with any of the corrosive silence evident in Evans’ work nor the impenetrability of Frank’s. Photographs, according to Papageorge, are but “peculiar half-fictions that rise from moments and trace only the surface of things.” Thus Papageorge strives to present not ageless, timeless truths but glimpses of the constantly changing personality of the social world. Life, beauty and feelings are portrayed lyrically and with humor. Ironically, the very fact that he avoids monumentalizing common human emotions and acts adds to the enduring truth of his work. In Central Park, could it simply be a coincidence that the three seated men on the park bench all have their faces covered, or is their positioning to be attributed to the presence of the photographer? The explanation is most likely attributed to Papageorge’s belief “that the truth photographs contain is at best an adjusted truth, a mediated truth, a collaboration between the photographer, his subject and, finally, photography itself.”
