Joe Rudko
My work addresses photography’s continuously expanding
role as a tool to communicate ideas, feelings, and truths, and
the medium’s tendency to shift shape in how it is defined and
understood. Using collage, drawing, and sculpture, all under
the guise of something inherently “photographic,” I manipulate,
obscure, and otherwise distort found photographs, cutting and
tearing them to reveal their limitations as representations of
reality. This disruption breaks apart the illusion of the image,
exposing the photograph’s vulnerability as a physical object and
its increasingly malleable visual representations. Because of
their aging and anonymity, these antiquated snapshots have the
ability to engage with anonymous personal narratives and the
fragmented way we assign value and meaning to their past.