Building + Becoming reviewed in Artillery
A MEASURED COOLNESS
Building + Becoming by Amir Zaki
REVIEWED BY CHRISTOPHER MICHNO
The works of Amir Zaki subtly subverts analog photography's long-held truth claims. His photography, surveyed in the newly published artist book Building+ Becoming, addresses the artist's digital manipulation and, setting aside the medium's presumed objectivity and fidelity to representation, invites the question, "to what end"?
Illuminated by two texts, "Stealing Light," a conversation with Corrina Peipon, and "Addition by Subtraction," an essay by Jennifer Ashton and Walter Benn Michaels, Building + Becoming explores Zaki's formation as an artist, touches briefly on biographical notes and artistic lineage and examines his process while engaging in critical dialog. Ashton and Michaels also analyze the technological and post-production practices integral to Zaki's images. At the core of their inquiry is the apparent contradiction in his claim of the Modernist tradition, via Edward Weston, and his use of a Gigapan device, which enables him to take a series of adjacent photos and stitch them together with software, resulting in works that defy the singular perspective associated with Modernist photography.