Josh Tonsfeldt: About a work #10

“In the series for About a Work, the earliest shot in 2010, the tension is between composition and chance. Usually, his photographs are part of larger works where they appear deeply altered— faded, worn down, absorbed into other materials–or obscured, placed behind sculptures or more recently optical films. Comparatively, this presentation is straightforward, with the images unadulterated.
Of the 21 included, only one is explicitly arranged: in it, a hand holds an empty McDonalds “McCafe” plastic cup up so it catches the light streaming in from a passenger seat window, an encounter that lends radiance to the disposable cup. Throughout the series, his framing instills intrigue and wit into quotidian scenes. A shrink-wrapped frozen pizza on an unmade bed. Branches seen through a window onto whose dirty pane a smiley face has been etched. Both of these feel somehow significant whereas they originally might have seemed gross. In others, inanimate objects become human. A yellow stuffed animal stares plaintively out the rain-spattered back window of a car. A battered work glove, stuck on a wood post, faces a row of storage lockers. On one locker, a hand-drawn sign reads “unique cakes by kim.” The gloveʼs posture seems sympathetic, as if saying: “Yes, kim, who runs a cake store out of a storage closet, your cakes are unique.”

Maybe I read–or project into–Joshʼs photographs as I do because I am so often a subject in them. The camera is always with us. He is constantly taking pictures, and the resulting stream becomes source material for all his works. And yet, while I know the scenes are taken from our life together,
they are often unrecognizable to me. They elude my recollection because the larger narrative–the day, the place, the story–is always withheld. Even when my profile is presented to me, it takes a moment to verify it as my own.”

Lauren Cornell.