Sacrifice Your Body
Roe Ethridge
MACK
Hardcover
128 pages
210×280 mm
2014
ISBN: 978-1-90794-661-5
Roe Ethridge’s practice is that of a restless maverick and his constantly evolving visual sensibility has spawned a myriad of copyists in what has become known as ‘the new school of synthetic photography’.
In this his latest artist book, Ethridge conflates a rich array of photographic tropes, combining personal documentary images made in western Palm Beach County, his mother’s childhood home, with surreal collage works, and a series discarded from a Chanel fashion shoot. These are interwoven with what appears to be a carefully directed scene depicting a teeth-white Durango SUV sinking into and then being retrieved from a canal. The clash of visual styles, histories and meaning establish a flatline of dissonance underscored by the touchline admonition of the neon title – ‘Sacrifice Your Body’.
Ethridge’s storytelling invokes a sense of discomfit akin to David Lynch’s film-making, a lucid undermining of veracity and morality and the ingrained materiality that underpins American life.
Roe Ethridge is a postmodernist commercial and art photographer, known for exploring the plastic nature of photography – how pictures can be easily replicated and recombined to create new visual experiences.
www.roeethridge.com
Mack is an art and photography publishing house based in London, working with established and emerging artists, writers and curators, and cultural institutions – releasing between 20-25 books per year.
