Where: 111 Minna Gallery
Event Date: March 4, 2016
Event Time: 5:00 pm - 11:30 pm
Location: 111 Minna, San Francisco
Exhibit Dates: March 4 - March 26
Wandering the deserted back-roads of the American Southwest, Troy Paiva has explored the abandoned underbelly of America since the 1970’s. Since 1989 he’s been taking pictures of it . . . at night, by the light of the full moon. After 25 years of development, Troy’s early vision has been fully realized through his unique style and technique. He lights the scene with hand-held, colored flashlights during extended time exposures. The effect reanimates these dead places, turning them into mutant tableaus of some vaguely familiar parallel universe. These long exposures allow the stars to spiral around Polaris and the moving clouds to smear
ethereally across the sky. Many of his subjects are already gone; bulldozed, burned down, subdivided, melted for scrap or simply vanished beneath the shifting desert sand. While there are minor digital darkroom adjustments to some of the photographs, all of
the lighting effects are created “in-camera” during the exposure. Troy’s images are not Photoshop creations.
Since 1998 Troy’s http://www.lostamerica.com site has been viewed over 100 million times and his low cost / high impact lighting techniques have been adopted by thousands of amateur and professional photographers alike. His images have been widely published, creating a cult of, “urbex” night photographers and light painters around the world. His work examines the evolution and eventual abandonment of the communities, structures and social iconography spawned during 20th century America’s western expansion… and the modern Urban Exploration culture that finds strange comfort