Anthony Goicolea – Fictions – PhotoBook Journal

This book by Anthony Goicolea has been hovering at the top of my review stack for the better part of year. It’s a really odd mash-up of drawings, water colors, and photographs. When examining most of the photographs it is obvious that due to shifting perspectives with the frame that these are composite images. To further illustrate that point that a composite photograph is a slight of hand, e.g. a truly fictional artistic artifact most of the singular images that have been drawn together to form the composite are provided on adjacent pages.

I keep thinking that I am making progress on this book review as there are some very interesting photographs to spend time studying, but alas I am not getting enough traction. I need to move on. So pending some future inspiration I offer the publishers comment and I may have more to say about this book at a later date.

From the publisher: Anthony Goicolea’s third book is an amalgam of photographs and drawings. Though the artist no longer uses himself as a model, he continues to use the motifs of his earlier work. All male, and under thirty, Goicolea’s subjects seem to have left their public schoolboy roots behind, and matriculated in an environment which is otherworldly, replete with codes and rituals unfamiliar to the viewer. Often appearing in matching “uniforms”–everything from red hooded sweatshirts to white underwear–Goicolea’s tribe of boys kiss under moonlight, build forts in strange, idyllic environs, “Christen” each other in shallow pools, and engage in a mischief whose purpose is never quite clear.

Douglas Stockdale