She was recently the guest editor for PQ (published by the Center for Photography in Woodstock) and is the co-curator of emerging US photography at the inaugural Flash Forward Festival (Toronto, October 2010).
Debra has chosen Jon Spencer's Bandstand series.
SHE WRITES: "Jon Spencer's photographs of Band Stands captured my imagination from the outset. The visual depth of the images, constructed from the successive layering of photographs, provide a magical, almost whirligig vision of time and space. Yet, they are also quiet, poetic studies of an architectural structure, synonymous with the formality of the English garden and of English leisure.
"I recall countless autumnal 'leaf-kicking' walks, solitary book-reading and people-watching whilst perched on a weather-beaten bench. And yet, I can't help but wonder about the ghostly rendition of an 'other presence' - what, who, when ..."
Spencer describes the bandstands as "noble sentinels". They bear silent witness to the changing populations that inhabit the parks. This homage to history, to memory and it's intrinsic connection with photography, is insightfully played out through his use of systematic construction, that situates the solid uniformity of the band stand within the milieu of mutable activity.
He succeeds in teasing out both a collective memory of place, and a more personal memory of experience. With "Nottingham Castle", for example, I recall countless autumnal 'leaf-kicking' walks, solitary book-reading and people-watching whilst perched on a weather-beaten bench. And yet, I can't help but wonder about the ghostly rendition of an 'other presence' - what, who, when ... - the heavy weight of an 'other' is intriguing and sets one's imagination darting in all directions, but always returning to the anchor of the band stand.
Jon Spencer has created photographs that are ethereal, at once very specific and yet so universal that the connection with the viewer is multifarious. The bandstands are indeed "silent sentinels", but they also call out ever so majestically."
Debra Klomp Ching
