Clay Lipsky

Atomic Overlook: 10, 2012

Clay Lipsky's Atomic Overlook re-contextualizes a legacy of atomic bomb tests. In an attempt to keep a nuclear threat feeling contemporary and omnipresent, Lipsky introduces archival images of atomic explosions among casual scenes of vacationers. The surreal images speak to a voyeuristic culture where catastrophe is viewed as entertainment by increasingly desensitized masses. The iconic mushroom cloud in each image serves as metaphor for larger societal issues such as: global warming, nuclear power...

Clay Lipsky's Atomic Overlook re-contextualizes a legacy of atomic bomb tests. In an attempt to keep a nuclear threat feeling contemporary and omnipresent, Lipsky introduces archival...

24"x24" photograph, signed and editioned on reverse. (edition of 5) This photograph is from a series entitled, “(UN)THINKABLE,” the culmination of 25 years of Phillip Buehler’s work photographing remnants of the Cold War throughout the United States and Europe. Buehler has visited NATO airbases, Cape Canaveral, the Airplane Graveyard, missile bunkers and silos (even within New York City’s borders) among many other sites that are historic, and yet hidden, forbidden, and forgotten. Photographs from this series will be featured in a solo exhibition this September at the Front Room Gallery. For anyone growing up during the Cold War the sense of dread of the world’s annihilation was all to concrete. It was evidenced in films like “Dr. Strangelove” and “The Day After.” Everyone knew the U.S. had enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world 5 times over, and assumed something similar about the Russians. For those not old enough to remember this built in fear, don’t worry (worry) it is reawakening. We don’t need another Cuban Missile Crisis to push us to the brink, the renewed tension with the Russians, and now North Korea’s recent entry in the nuclear weapons club is more than enough to unnerve anyone who is watching these conflicts unfold. Phillip Buehler is watching closely. Through this comprehensive series Buehler’s photos show many aspects of this non-war war. In Buehler’s aerial photographs from a military airplane storage yard in Arizona the repetition of the same model of bomber aircraft are so abstractly pattern-based that the overall effect beginnings to feel like a Middle Eastern tapestry...

Historically , newsstand magazines have used a standard set of practices when it came to choosing their cover image. Their goal was to use a image that people could instantly relate to. The idea being, if an image pops off the page it will attract more attention and then generate more newsstand sales. For editors, choosing a cover was first a marketing decision and then an aesthetic one. That is why most magazine covers and (that includes art magazines) pretty much looked the same. They used familiar images, mostly of celebrities, beauty people or news items of that would beckon and aggressively reach out to the prospect. In this Modern Photography Cover of August 1983, they chose a radical departure. Their cover image that was the opposite of the norm. Mitchell Funk’s Graphic Surreal Landscape...