A solo exhibition by Joseph Marotta
Alice Gallery
July 15– September 9, 2022
Opening reception | July 15, 6-8 pm
The Constructed Narrative
I give the readers the opportunity to supplement what they read with their own imagination. -James Joyce
I had no other solution than to rewrite myself. -Roland Barthes
This work explores the process of memory, travel, displacement, and longing, creating a linkage between text and image and the way we reconstruct experience. Each piece is made up of two to three photographs, requiring the viewer to complete the implied linkage between them. I also include text, which is sometimes embedded in the image or handwritten later. The images are also connected by a solid or transparent colored rectangle. Since color can have such a strong emotional response, this adds an additional element for the viewer to construct their interpretation. It is up to the viewer to complete the narrative, making up their own story.’
One of photography’s characteristics is its ability to reference real experience. In photography, the viewer’s the one doing the looking and putting things together. Photography’s association with personal experience, memory, and suspended time are unique, allowing the viewer to give significance to the image on a personal level, and in this way, make it theirs. It’s always a surprise.
About the Artist
Joseph Marotta started the photography program at the University of Utah in 1978 and chaired that program until 2014. Marotta also served as the chair of the Art and Art History Department from 1988 to 1993. His work has been shown nationally and internationally including in New York, Washington, Hamburg, Pingyao, and Taipei, and is held in collections in New York, California, Colorado, the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, and the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.