MICHAEL
CAPPABIANCA
From an email to the gallery:
“These photos started out as interiors in a bookstore/living space as you may have seen some of the non book related images. I'm going to trim the non-book photos off perhaps put in a separate web gallery, they just aren't cohesive enough as the book photos became the focal point. I started out with some photos of books in the space that were more "found". Then I started to move them around, and once that happened I figured I was doing still lives. I felt I was coming to that point and thought "oh crap, I'm going to have to control everything" so they've stayed on the more elementary side of things trying not to juggle too many balls but looking closely at these things as forms, in relation to the structural space around them. Connecting the book to the structure made the concept of Ideas and books and architectural elements(structure) or thoughts that much stronger.
So I've been building on the "forms" of books, resisting whenever possible to let the content of the book actually dictate the idea of the picture. The hard thing is to not let the title or some obvious aspect of the book dominate a space that may have no relation to it, the main proving ground is in perception first, the concept comes later. The titles come about by using a book that may have been a focal point to start out with or in some cases what remained the main interest in the image.
I think there's a certain distance I keep with them. It's easy to get swept away with a ton of beautiful leather bindings and think it will make a great photograph. Romanticizing books is fairly easy. It's not that some of these don't have it, but the overall picture has to work for the effect with the particular intellectual distance I keep. I do like books but I know they are not long in this world for practical purposes. The concrete nature of them help describe a visual connection between us and our ideas. Someone I know once used the term "Crystals of the Imagination" to describe books. Rare gems these will be. I wonder what the virtual book could be called? It has the same worth as knowledge, the same idea, more easily distributed, and seemingly even closer to the impermanence and immateriality of thought.” (Michael Cappabianca)
2008 Exurbia, David Salow Gallery, Los Angeles
2003 Between, Basil Halward Gallery, Portland, OR
2009 Flat Files II,Triple Base Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2008 Defining Place, Center for Experimental Art and Architecture, Los Angeles,CA
2006 PhotoSF, Fort Mason, San Francisco, CA
2006 Virus, Lobot Gallery, Oakland, CA
2006 California College of the Arts Graduate Exhibition. San Francisco, CA
2002 16x20, Group Polaroid Show, Basil Halward Gallery, Portland, OR
1998 In the Shadows: 20 emerging Photographers, Boston, MA,
Selected Publications
American Photography 26 (Published Fall 2010)
Education
2006 M.F.A., Photography, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA
1998 B.F.A., Photography, Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA.