SANCTUARY - Photographs by Todd Edward Herman - Opening Reception

SANCTUARY – Photographs by Todd Edward Herman 
March 11th – April 6th, 2023

Opening Reception:
Saturday, March 11th
5  – 8 pm

The Armory
2565 Curtis Street, Denver, CO 80205

The photographs in this exhibit are excerpts from a chapter of my forthcoming book SANCTUARY, which focuses on themes of domestic confinement, social conformity and bereavement.

Sourced from photos shot by myself, family members, and culled from the surfeit of imagery found in AI databases, the images in SANCTUARY are sometimes theatrical and absurd, while at the same time appearing to be observational. Each photograph reenacts an unpictured or imagined moment from a childhood filtered through archives of familial relation and photographic convention. Each reenactment of a personal history suggests that of a shared or collective one.

The organizing principles of this work are often contradictory, revising my own memories, perhaps adding a layer of previously unexpressed emotion to them, while upending the very methods of my revision. As autoethnography, these images push the limits of their own credibility, falsely insinuating the position of a photographer who is never entirely present as either subject or author, while still alluding to a long list of feelings and understandings and stories of affiliation and conflict that are not completely fictional.

I hope that in some way viewers can join in my appreciation of this.

—Todd Edward Herman 2023

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Todd Edward Herman is a visual artist and curator. Throughout his career, Herman has collaborated with artists on books, films, performances and exhibitions all over the world. He is also the founding director of East Window Gallery and co-founder of Sins Invalid Performance Project.

Todd has been the recipient of many awards for his work including the San Francisco International Film Festival’s New Vision Award, the Art Council of Northern Ireland’s Artist in Residence Award, Grants from the San Francisco Film Arts Foundation, the Boulder Colorado Arts Commission, a Western States Regional Media Arts Fellowship, Taipei Artist Village Residency, and the San Francisco Art Commission’s Emerging Curator Award.

He has presented his work at such venues as RedLine Contemporary Art Center, The International Film Festival Rotterdam, San Francisco International Film Festival, Southbank Centre, Anthology Film Archives, San Francisco Cinematheque, and Pacific Film Archives.

“At their best artists can question habits of understanding, looking, and storytelling; investigating how personal and historical forms are constructed rather than fixed. For me, this means finding new ways to generate work that examines how images compose, enforce, or undermine — rather than simply reflect — ideas of history, embodiment, dominant values, authenticity and authorship.”