Emidio Puglielli

Through

July 1 - August 1, 2010

A collector of vernacular photography, Australian artist Emidio Puglielli possesses a keen interest in old snapshots and their continued resonance in contemporary society. With his ongoing project, "Through," Puglielli explores the social nature of these found photographs as complex records of human experience. He approaches each photograph as an object and uses it as a subject.

To do so, Puglielli draws from the thousands of snapshots he has amassed and creates new, evocative images which simultaneously show both sides of the original photograph, as if looking through them. Through this practice, what were once mostly representational pictures of people, places, and things become reflexive works which encourage us to question how--and what--photographs cause us to remember.

About his process, Puglielli says: "The back of a photograph is an interesting site. Its prime function is to support the emulsion, but on this surface we can also find contextual support for the image. All of us have flipped snapshots over to see if anything is written there. We may find names or the nature of the occasion; our memories are not as reliable as we would like them to be and these little notes can trigger details about a situation we have all but forgotten."

Emidio Puglielli is a visual artist based in Melbourne, Australia. He holds a Master's Degree from the University of Tasmania, and has exhibited widely in Australia, including the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne and the Queensland Centre for Photography in Brisbane. Blue Sky's presentation of "Through" marks Puglielli's first U.S. exhibition.