I discovered Todd Eberle over the past year of sifting through many issues of Vanity Fair, and he has come up a couple of times on some of my favorite photo blogs. I haven't seen his work for real and in person yet, just in print and online. I'm curious to learn more, as I respond immediately with admiration for his images, but don't know a lot about it. His work seems to be mostly commercial and/or editorial, even the abstractions that select portions of gridded ceiling lights. Says Eberle in a 2005 interview, "Donald (Judd, who was the subject of some of Eberle's first work in the early 90s) was all about the grid, and I am all about the grid." Now, I love the grid with a big huge bear hug, but there is something so sterile about Eberle's gridded abstractions that they seem to be taken while on his commercial shoots and pulled into the context of art afterwards. It's not just the age old question of photography as art, it's more that I'm coming to realize that the lines between fine art and commerical art are rapidly dissolving, intertwining, and otherwise loosening up for a much wider definition.
I wish I could see his upcoming show at the Art Institute of Chicago. But I'll bet there will be another show soon in New York- he seems to be on a roll. I applied to be his studio manager at one point... maybe someday they'll dig up my resume and give me a call. Then I'd learn all about his practice!
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