- Title
- Channel 5 News KTLA Los Angeles, California USA: War
- Date Made
- 1970-2011
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print, vacuum-formed vinyl, masonite, and aluminum
- Dimensions
- Installation: 27 × 8 × 8 in. (68.58 × 20.32 × 20.32 cm)
a-i) Gelatin silver prints and vacuum-formed pouch: 7 1/4 × 6 7/8 × 3/4 in. (18.42 × 17.46 × 1.91 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2015.54a-j
- Collecting Area
- Photography
- Curatorial Notes
Michael Stone’s work explores photographic materiality, with an ongoing interest in politics and social unrest. In this photo-sculpture, photographs taken directly off 1970s television newscasts have been vacuum-sealed into consumable pouches and displayed on a rack similar to those found in your local convenience store. Stone’s three-dimensional approach to photography is predicated on his study of industrial design prior to his graduate work at UCLA with Robert Heinecken, who promoted an experimental practice that mined found images (in magazines, newspapers, and TV advertisements) from our media-saturated world.
Here, politically fraught scenes, like those of former Los Angeles Police Chief Thomas Reddin in his new position as a news commentator, beside a visual onslaught of the Vietnam War and those of B-movie star turned governor Ronald Reagan, are transposed from screen to shelf, representing the artist’s commentary on American over-commodification. Stone deftly exposes the viewer to the influences of our mediated world and to California’s complicity vis-à-vis our dueling centers of entertainment and military production. This work was included in the seminal exhibition Photography into Sculpture (organized by the Museum of Modern Art in 1970), which marked an important moment of experimental applications of photography, of which Southern California was identified as a primary locus.
Eve Schillo
2021
- Copyright
- © Michael Stone
