The San Francisco Museum of Photography
The San Francisco Museum of Photography staged a terrific exhibition on the photos of Perez.
An excerpt from the exhibition's program:
...Perez photographs his subjects' faces in intimate detail, twisting the focus to abstraction while documenting the sadness of aging. He uses the "flaws" in their faces to create unexpected shapes more reminiscent of a surrealist work than a simple portrait.
In "Heads Blown Up" Perez seeks to maximize the expressive qualities of his subjects by removing them from the limitations of gesture. This change in context gives the images a greater impact, evoking different reactions from the audience. The strength of such images is based on isolation, magnification, and framing, causing the image to be interpreted as more than just an eye or a mouth. Changing context to change perception.
Perez describes the face as a "Free floating signifier that allows each viewer individual interpretations…the face becomes a text capable of many complex readings, an agent of evocation and a malleable instrument of performance with an ever expanding depth of possible meanings."
The San Francisco Museum of Photography
The San Francisco Museum of Photography staged a terrific exhibition on the photos of Perez.
An excerpt from the exhibition's program:
...Perez photographs his subjects' faces in intimate detail, twisting the focus to abstraction while documenting the sadness of aging. He uses the "flaws" in their faces to create unexpected shapes more reminiscent of a surrealist work than a simple portrait.
In "Heads Blown Up" Perez seeks to maximize the expressive qualities of his subjects by removing them from the limitations of gesture. This change in context gives the images a greater impact, evoking different reactions from the audience. The strength of such images is based on isolation, magnification, and framing, causing the image to be interpreted as more than just an eye or a mouth. Changing context to change perception.
Perez describes the face as a "Free floating signifier that allows each viewer individual interpretations…the face becomes a text capable of many complex readings, an agent of evocation and a malleable instrument of performance with an ever expanding depth of possible meanings."