Jonathan Gitelson

Jonathan Gitelson introduced me to his work this evening. He's got kind of an obsessive thing going with urban phenomena: things that happen with your garbage cans, things people stick to your car, the sense of location and the profusion of locations that can be dislocating at times.

Take some time with his website and tell me what you think.

He lives in Chicago, and maybe in many ways his work could have been made in New York or Los Angeles. But there's a use of space that says Midwest to me -- there's more to it than that but I just don't have the time right now to go into it.

I mean, he can't go in close to his car, and he can't frame his photograph tight onto the specific location. He's got to center the car and the location within the frame, and make sure that there's nothing, or practically nothing, in the street around it.

I have a need for emptiness that makes me relax immediately once we drive out past the Ohio border in our trips out West. I need to have many miles between me and the horizon.

Jon seems to need to center his subjects in a way that really emphasizes their locatedness - (is that a word?) It reminds me of looking through microscopes at tiny creatures, the way they were always surrounded by wide empty space. It's like a means of study.

His work resonates with me quite strongly. Maybe partly because I grew up out there, not Chicago but St. Louis. I definitely identify with the specific kind of alienation that suffuses some of this. You almost feel like you're not in on a big joke that everybody else is in on. I like the way he plays with human fallibility.

See for yourself if you haven't yet and get back to me, OK? Thanks -

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