(Click the image to view this video on Lo Scalzo’s Vimeo page)
If you’re a literature critic, you have so many tools to work with. All the different paradigms you can put a text through, all the different tools that a writer uses to fix their points to a sentence. Tone, rhythm, diction, word choice, structure, metaphor, analogy, dialogue, denotation, connotation, imagery, personification, allusion, metonymy, meter –the list is bottomless. These subtle devices impact meaning and allow the writer a sense of sophistication and nuance that is so important to how they present their message.
Sometimes, if you look at too much of the daily pulp, it’s hard to believe that this same level of sophistication is possible in the visual sense. At its worst, story gets mistaken for a children’s book, taking on the rote structure used to relay information to eight year-olds: beginning, middle, end, climax, resolution. The photographs follow the same, clunky pattern: wide, medium, tight, rinse, repeat. And, perhaps, someone chops the layers out of a photo to make a headshot, turning the photographer’s crafted statement into a rough, ham-fisted mallet. ”It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… ” becomes ‘they were alright times.’
The thing that I appreciate most about Jim Lo Scalzo’s recent work is that it doesn’t succumb to formula, delivering emotive nuance with the directness that the photograph is most suited for. His multimedia pieces capture sentiment, bringing the viewer into his frames and playing on the less-obtuse sense of place evoked by his subjects. Needless to say, I’m a huge fan. If you’re headed out to catch the new G.I. Joe movie, don’t bother looking. But if you want to see the best of what our craft has to offer, check out Lo Scalzo’s Vimeo page here: http://www.vimeo.com/5653709
