Nature and artifice, beauty and roughness – reality according to the photographer Bobby Doherty. The hallucinatory imagery and still life photography of his latest book Dream About Nothing
Dream About Nothing: Bobby Doherty’s analog photography for Loose Joints Publishing
«There is almost nothing new in the world, what is important is the different and new position in which an artist finds himself considering and seeing the things of so-called nature and the works that preceded or interested him», once said the twentieth century Italian master Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964), famous for his still lives in which the objects depicted – bottles, vases, coffee pots – are removed from their functional context and analyzed in their pure essence.
Almost a century later, these words are more relevant than ever, as demonstrated by the latest editorial project by American photographer Bobby Doherty. Dream About Nothing is his return to the editorial market following the debut book Seabird (2018). Published by Loose Joints Publishing, this photographic book draws from his consolidated analog photography still life practice, but also shows some unprecedented stylistic nuances of Doherty.
Roughness and subtlety: Bobby Doherty’s Dream About Nothing
What do a green bunch of chard and a plastic bottle of water have in common? And what about a greasy cake covered in cream with the intricate internal mechanism of an electronic device? Maybe nothing, probably everything. In Dream About Nothing, Bobby Doherty depicts the banality of the world by juxtaposing what is mundane and what is sublime, in a dance of images in which nature and artifice alternate and wink at each other.
On the one hand, insignificant subjects belonging to our rough and ordinary life – broken chairs, stone walls from which weeds sprout, small boxes containing paper clips and thumbtacks; on the other, colorful flowers, a majestic white cat suffering from heterochromia, various types of pastries and sweets. Doherty’s still lives invite the viewer to ask themselves what we consider ordinary, obvious, and what we perceive as special, exceptional.
Bobby Doherty’s irony: human intervention and natural grandeur
If taken individually, the images of Dream About Nothing are quite intuitive, but when they are mixed and put into dialogue with each other, unexpected meanings emerge. And so, the photograph of an orange butterfly with a chipped wing resting on a yellow flower, next to that of stacked melting icicles, seems a reminder of the transience of our life and everything surrounding us.
Dream About Nothing does not lack Doherty’s usual irony and roughness which are condensed into his captivating compositions. A lime on top of a bottle with a label reading “Vitamin Lemon”, small octopuses seen from below whose tentacles mingle with what appear to be bicycle chains, and many other shots in which the human presence or intervention remains in the background but is still visible and tangible.
Every day is a new day: Bobby Doherty’s book is an unexplainable, rough dream
The book opens with an introduction by the photographer, a sort of declaration of intent. «When I go to sleep, I forget everything, sort of like amnesia. And when I wake up every day, I have fresh eyes and a fresh look at everything», he says. Jumping from one page to another, and from one image to another, the viewer is catapulted into the photographer’s introspective journey which at first glance seems to clash with a dilemma: why this ordinary, trivial subject over that?
But Dream About Nothing transcends any question or investigation into the artist’s choice to portray one subject or another. The book leaves its readers in that state of confusion which we all experience when we wake up from a dream where events, places, things, and people mixed and merged, giving life to imaginary scenarios. And the title of the book perfectly encapsulates this concept: how often do we wake up stunned and excited from a dream, but we do not remember anything about what we unconsciously experienced?
Reality can be rough sometimes: Seabird by Bobby Doherty
Dream About Nothing is the second volume published by Doherty with Loose Joints Publishing. Seabird is a book of moments observed by the American photographer between 2014 and 2018. What emerges from this body of work is an over-simplification of the subjects represented: the clearest glass on the reddest tablecloth, the wettest dew on the softest leaf.
Yet, from this exaggeration we perceive the honesty of Doherty who, through the photographic medium, becomes the spokesperson for an egalitarianism which places meaningful and meaningless, pretty and rough on the same level. A photo album of the strangeness and extraordinary ordinariness of human life, condensed into emotions, actions, colors, and small details which demand attention.
Dream About Nothing: still life photography now and then
Still life is a pictorial depiction of inanimate objects which has occupied a predominant position throughout the history of art. “Still life” derives from the Dutch word stilleven, coined in the 17th century when painters used to bring together a wide variety of objects to communicate allegorical meanings; a practice which enjoyed immense popularity throughout Europe. From Caravaggio (1571-1610) to Jean-Baptiste Chardin (1699-1779), from Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) to Giorgio Morandi, there are many artists who have engaged in this pictorial genre.
However, still life has been able to overcome the boundaries of paintings on canvas, capturing the interest of numerous photographers since the beginning of the 19th century. Still life has been used as a means of observing nature by Karl Blossfeldt (1865-1932) – with his iconic plant silhouettes – and more recently by photographers Kenro Izu (1949) and Tom Baril (1952), among others. Today, contemporary still life photographs often recall past styles while exploiting modern languages and paradoxes relevant today.
Still life and analog photography: Bobby Doherty
Faithful to its mission to circulate new visual perspectives and promote underrepresented voices in the international photographic discourse, Loose Joints Publishing with Dream About Nothing brought attention to the photographic language of still life through the bold gaze of Doherty. He studied at New York’s School of Visual Art, where he developed a very precise stylistic code: vertical photos, in color, and on 35mm film.
His compositions – as shown in Dream About Nothing – are often inspired by the world of food and cuisine, which he enjoys combining both with everyday objects and with luxurious jewels, ribbons, and bows. Through the digital manipulation of images and color saturation, Doherty creates repetitive and hallucinatory patterns where his subjects are both intriguing and sickening.
Dream About Nothing: new perspectives and new languages in Bobby Doherty’s photography
In Dream About Nothing, for the first time in his career Doherty invites us to step back from the language of visual image overload to which much contemporary still life and observational photography lends itself. The subjects are arranged with the utmost precision in front of the lens and the eyes of the viewers, stripped of any excess and exaggeration.
Faced with so much sobriety one might wonder: «What is the point of all this?». Where categories disappear and the artist’s intervention is still perceptible but discreet, the shots take on a voice of their own; sometimes loud, sometimes subdued, which can make us feel uncomfortable or at ease. But it pushes us to take a leap of perspective and learn to look at our rough reality with new, immaculate eyes.
Bobby Doherty, photographer
Bobby Doherty (b. 1989, Brewster, New York) is a photographer living in Brooklyn, New York. Doherty’s work is characterized by a meticulous approach to composition, and an eye for minute detail, incorporating still life, observational photography, and digital composition. His commercial clients include Louis Vuitton, Apple, Off White, Swarovski and Mac Cosmetics. He was staff photographer at New York Magazine from 2013 to 2018. His first book Seabird was published by Loose Joints in 2018.
