Julie Blackmon: New Work

Julie Blackmon, Talent Show, 2019, Archival Pigment Print, 22x22" Image, Edition of 10, $4,000

For such a strong, stylistically cohesive body of work, Julie Blackmon’s photographs are fascinatingly multifaceted in their approach to subject matter. The elaborate, stratified scenes she captures in her photographs can feature varying combinations of interiors, landscapes, architecture, adults, children, plants, and animals, each work embodying its own precise atmosphere. However, a common thread of theatricality connects each individual image. The dramas that unfold before Blackmon’s lens are subtle, drawing the viewer in with rich colors and textures and leaving open-ended questions about the complex narratives she creates. Blackmon nimbly straddles the line between realism and surrealism while confronting contemporary cultural norms. One could study a Blackmon photograph multiple times and find some new aspect of the complicated story she weaves upon each viewing.

Blackmon was born in Springfield, MO where she still lives and works. She is one of nine children and many of her siblings and family members still live in the Springfield neighborhood in which they grew up. She often uses family members, friends, and neighbors in her photographs, which are staged then captured digitally in-camera, as opposed to photomontage. In a recent conversation with photo-eye Gallery, Blackmon elaborated on the conceptual framework behind one of three brand new images just released on photo-eye’s website:

"Talent Show (pictured above) was very much inspired by seeing the Circus Sideshow exhibit at the Met two years ago. It featured various painters from Seurat to Picasso, who often mined the sideshow theme during the 19th and 20th centuries. About the same time, in real life, my nieces and nephews were putting on their own makeshift talent show outside my sister's garage for friends and neighbors. So ...it was just one of those things where one experience mirrored another, and the idea of the "stage" really intrigued me, so I decided to do my own version of Talent Show. The baby is my nephew, Sonny, who at 8 months, has so much hair he looks like he's wearing a toupee. It wasn't hard attracting a crowd when we shot this one Sunday afternoon. Some of my other nieces and nephews helped me as the 'backstage' characters." – Julie Blackmon

All three new works are still available at their introductory price in each size:

Talent Show, 2019
(top of page)

22 x 22 Inches

Edition of 10

Starting at $4,000

32 x 32 inches

Edition of 7

Starting at $6,500

40 x 40 inches

Edition of 5

Starting at $9,000

Ezra, 2019