The Buffalo Hunters
By Ryan • Nov 29th, 2007 • Category: News for Creatives (archives), PhotographyBy Troy Shulze for the Houston Press:
“Eric Michael Jones should be applauded for thinking big. His digital photos, some printed as large as five feet tall, uphold my general thinking concerning photography exhibits: the bigger the better. Who wants to squint? Film grain should be viewed in blown-up proportions — it enhances the image. Digital photography, though, presents issues. As much as Jones earns points for going extra large, he may want to think about downsizing, both in dimension and in concept.
Of the eight images on display in “The Buffalo Hunters,” many of which were inspired by fairy tales and short stories, only one truly gets under the skin. Nobody Said Anything, inspired by the Raymond Carver story, depicts twin girls disemboweling a tuna-size lionfish hanging by its tailfin from a noose. One girl covers the fish’s eye, while the other, wearing long, black rubber gloves, pulls a mix of entrails and jewelry (diamond necklaces, strings of pearls) out of a slit in the fish’s belly. The girls’ expressions aren’t of glee, and their demeanor isn’t indicative of two children who’ve just whacked open the world’s most bizarre piñata. They’re simply focused on the job. It’s wonderfully unsettling.
The image contains elements of collage; Jones has obviously pasted brunette wigs on the twins, and their heads are disproportionate to their bodies, suggesting another cut-and-paste job. Hell, the whole thing’s probably Photoshopped (Jones admits that the works in “The Buffalo Hunters” contain very little of his own personal photography). Still, Nobody Said Anything works as an example of well-composed digital imagery. The noticeable imperfections of digital media — the obvious indications of Photoshop surgery — augment the image’s content, its dream logic.”
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