ON THE EDGE OF CLEAR MEAN: RECONSIDERNG THE WORK OF JOHN WOOD

Strauss highlights John Wood, who is thought as one of those renegades who went against "pure photography" by incorporating drawing, painting, collage, and every other technique he could get his hands on into his practice. Wood took his first drawing class at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester in the third grade, and has never stopped drawing. In Wood's work, the photograph often represents the given thing, what is received of the world. The work then is to put that given and received thing into play, to activate it conceptually, aesthetically, and kinesthetically. For Wood, that means transforming it haptically, through the hand. His drawing and collaging and intricate manipulations of images are a way of understanding and informing photographs.