I mentioned Brad Brace in my previous post about Photography and Fluxus. Below is a quote directly from Brad (from his Facebook page) in which Brad talks about his latest photo-pased project.
dISCREET pROFILES (the Oregon collection): Thousands of enlarged and enhanced photographs, mostly low-res cellphone, web-cam, and low-end digital camera self-portraits, culled from dating/social websites — as you might expect, there is some explicit content (more than is permitted here unfortunately: you really shoul…d see them all, but take a deep breath first) — fascinating and occasionally disturbing. You may realize that this is not the first time I’ve collected public imagery: notably dumpster-diving at photo-finishers’ in the 70’s. Whenever possible I retained any color casts, cropping and lighting. The portraits are actually very considered, sometimes selections made/altered merely to obscure the identity that they wished to presumably portray initially. Sunglasses are a popular ruse, as are close-ups of clevage, butts, feet and groins. And some, but surprising few, are filched from somewhere online, but this must be a risky choice in the event of an ‘actual encounter.’ How much introductory information/description do you want to put out there to begin with? There are some very creative, even artful, solutions to this dilemma. This massive 2+ GB PDF ebook is $250
(sorry about the price but it was a hellish amount of work and I guarantee you won’t be disappointed or YMB), and must be ordered directly. Use my verified Paypal account to have the DVD delivered at no charge: [bbrace@eskimo.com; http://bbrace.laughingsquid.net/buy-into.html] (in two parts, each 1600 pages/photos; 6.94 x 6.94″).Techically the incredible diverse range of imagery was difficult to bring under control; despite a variety of intricate processing directions, the scripts would inevitably crash or be inable to render a decent image. These were handled individually. The sequence, in the pdfs is probably pretty much random: processing used whatever numbering systems were in place, and then renumbered everything so there was no trace of last origin. If I receive a reasonable number of orders, I’ll offer another state of the union or country… but California had to be the place to begin. Sure to be a collectors’ (socio-anthropologists’) item! An amazing and compelling, collective portrait! The interspersed military imagery (or maybe something else), also introduces a new spin on the hopes for this already tenuous social culture. I’ve had to organize these in some fashion, so by state/country seem to be the prevailing approach. And given how often workers are compelled to move around, there’s more of a local difference in social-sexual proclivity than you might expect. Oregon’s up next: a hostile corrupt, conservative police-state that’s reflected, I think in the mannerisms of its self-portraiture. It’s often chosen for consumer surveys…
/:b
Brad provides these two URLs for further information: