Jeff Bark's latest photography series, "Drunk Dad," departs from his previous commercial work, embodying a deeply personal folklore. His recent pieces evoke a bleak landscape, reminiscent of both rural decay and the surreal ambiance of David Lynch. Through dark, allegorical imagery and metaphors of fractured American dreams, Bark questions societal ideals while inviting viewers to delve into themes of nostalgia and personal trauma. This shift towards 'auto-biographical' photography marks an important evolution in his artistic narrative, as friends and critics alike sense an emotional undercurrent in his work.
The work was sexy and decadent but largely impersonal. His most recent project, "Drunk Dad," by contrast, marks a move toward something like autobiographical folklore.
The pictures in "Drunk Dad" are almost universally baleful and brooding, emanating the creeping stink of death or a discomfiting sense of the run-down rural uncanny.
There are rotting, weedy still lifes that recall the paintings of seventeenth-century Dutch masters; chilly nowheresville landscapes of forgotten, blighted towns.
His picture of an eerily lifeless, glassy-eyed eagle, framed triumphantly as if it were meant to adorn a postage stamp, provides a bathetic testament to our zombified ideals.
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