Jeff Ferrell

Jeff Ferrell
American Dirt
The Reading Room, Dallas [link]
March 5- April 17, 2016

Featuring 150 found photographs from Jeff Ferrell’s dumpster diving expeditions, the exhibition is an eclectic, anthropological survey primarily featuring Ft. Worth residents’ detritus. Unlike traditional archives, the display is not organized chronologically or by subject or even photographic process, but rather a curious juxtaposition between family snapshots and commercial portraits produced over the past 100 years. What can we glean from these discarded images? What is their sociological value? The image of the trophy hunter posed with his prized hippopotamus and the child with the shotgun resonate with current, sadly unchanging, socio-political issues. And dumb cat pictures are still all the rage.

~ Colette Copeland
images courtesy of The Reading Room, taken by Kevin Todora