Titled "Draw Blood for Proof," Mario Sorrenti's newest book has just been released by the publisher Steild.
"Initially conceived as a personal project on the walls of Sorrenti's New York loft, the material in Draw Blood for Proof eventually found its way onto gallery walls as a large-scale installation piece in 2004. Papering the site from floor to ceiling with layers of collected snapshots, contact sheets, prints, Polaroids and ephemera drawn from over fifteen years of work, Sorrenti's collection was a unique look into the artist's diaristic creative process, going beyond ideas of public and private production.
Re-photographed as a series of 8x10 Polaroids and reconstituted here, Sorrenti's montage finds yet another incarnation in book form. Here the images are both documentation and personal exploration, and the layout re-positions Sorrenti's photographs in a series faithful to their placement on the walls of the gallery. This gives the viewer a sense of the raw impact of the original installation but also creates new visual relationships between images as they move across spreads, redefining themselves and one another on the pages.
Images obscured in one layout may appear fully and with renewed force on the next. The result is a free-associative experience like memory or dreams, rooted in Sorrenti's methods but drawing on his cache of personal associations, and the act of perception becomes part of the work." ~ Publisher release
These photo collages are reminiscent to the ones I had on my bedroom wall when I was a teen. I would paste hundreds of images from my favourite photographers alongside my own images. It became an inspiration wall of sorts. My parents thought I was a little crazy but never said anything.
"Initially conceived as a personal project on the walls of Sorrenti's New York loft, the material in Draw Blood for Proof eventually found its way onto gallery walls as a large-scale installation piece in 2004. Papering the site from floor to ceiling with layers of collected snapshots, contact sheets, prints, Polaroids and ephemera drawn from over fifteen years of work, Sorrenti's collection was a unique look into the artist's diaristic creative process, going beyond ideas of public and private production.
Re-photographed as a series of 8x10 Polaroids and reconstituted here, Sorrenti's montage finds yet another incarnation in book form. Here the images are both documentation and personal exploration, and the layout re-positions Sorrenti's photographs in a series faithful to their placement on the walls of the gallery. This gives the viewer a sense of the raw impact of the original installation but also creates new visual relationships between images as they move across spreads, redefining themselves and one another on the pages.
Images obscured in one layout may appear fully and with renewed force on the next. The result is a free-associative experience like memory or dreams, rooted in Sorrenti's methods but drawing on his cache of personal associations, and the act of perception becomes part of the work." ~ Publisher release
These photo collages are reminiscent to the ones I had on my bedroom wall when I was a teen. I would paste hundreds of images from my favourite photographers alongside my own images. It became an inspiration wall of sorts. My parents thought I was a little crazy but never said anything.
Mario Sorrenti is a New York based photographer whose work has appeared in the publications W, Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar, among many others, and has been exhibited internationally at institutions such as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Previous publications of his work include The Machine
Buy the book here folks!
