Bobby Doherty – Dream About Nothing

Acclaimed still-life photographer Doherty pushes his precise visual language to a place of inarticulation and unconscious association, in a bold sequence of singular image arrangements, rhymed and bonded together. Individually, Bobby Doherty’s photographs are quite clear. In front of you, a flower, a drinks can, a courgette, next an alloy wheel. But collectively their meanings become distorted. A photo of a popsicle carries a different weight once it is opposite a battered butterfly. But what are you meant to be looking at? Doherty's images attempt to overwhelm the viewer with questions about what we consider mundane, and what we view as special, in order to ask a greater question: one that transcends “why this over that” but instead, “why anything at all?” In Dream About Nothing , Doherty embarks on a more introspective articulation of his remarkably consistent visual practice. He invites us to pull back from the visually-tumbling-image-overload language that much of contemporary still-life and observational photography relents itself to, instead placing, with utmost care and precision, a line of observed things and places before your eyes. What does it all mean? Doherty takes this question more seriously than the serotonin colours and satisfying framing of his images may suggest. Across five years of continuously photographing within and without the studio, Doherty rhymes images into a place where their categories break down, stripping away much of the warmer language of his previous book, Seabird . These pictures ask us to feel, albeit somewhat uncomfortably, the essence of a photographic voice, pulling at the seams of visual categories, asking both more and less of us from each photograph. From the big to the small, the broken to the pristine, Dream About Nothing shows Bobby Doherty making magic, as he rushes to the next photograph, waiting for you to turn the next page. Shipping November 2023 Bobby Doherty (b. 1989, Brewster, New York) is a photographer living in Brooklyn, New York. Doherty’s work is characterised by a meticulous approach to composition, and an eye for minute detail, incorporating still life, observational photography, and digital composition. His commercial clients include Louis Vuitton, Apple, Off White, Swarovski and Mac Cosmetics. He was staff photographer at New York Magazine from 2013 to 2018. His first book Seabird was published by Loose Joints in 2018. Print Edition also available: one of four Digital C-Type prints 120 pages, 240 × 305 mm, 70 colour plates Section-sewn silkscreened hard cover with a text by Lauren Cook Edited by Sarah Chaplin Espenon at Loose Joints Studio Designed & Published by Loose Joints LJ189, November 2023 978-1-912719-50-1 Press: New Yorker Creative Review Document Journal METAL Magazine Lampoon Magazine New York Launch Thursday 07 December 6–8pm, MAST Books