"John Divola's Floating Eye" by Colleen Kelsey, Interview
For John Divola, photography works as a transcendental medium. It does not merely document, or serve as an unflinching eye, but yields potential for a full-bodied exploration of perception and performance, playing with the construct of the photographic process. Divola has been creating images for over 40 years, working and living in Southern California. His subject matter has snaked through vandalized abandoned houses, dogs loping through the desert, idyllic SoCal tract housing, and himself—running away from the camera in a single exposure, in a series entitled "As Far As I Could Get (10 seconds)." All of his works, however, share a conceptual language rooted in Divola's practice of photography, painting, and conceptual art, all set in the fecund visual environment of Southern California, where civilization and nature intermingle.