Chilean Flamingo, 90028
2007

In his photographs, Elad Lassry uses existing stock photography to create new, slightly off-kilter images that question the status of the picture in the age of digital technology. Characterizing this tactic as an offspring of the work of Pictures Generation artists such as Richard Prince and Laurie Simmons, Lassry restages scenes in his studio, producing still lifes and portraits that recall commercial photography from the 1970s and 1980s. Chilean Flamingo displays Lassry’s clean aesthetic and high-key color—and, equally, his penchant for humorous, often kitschy subjects (others include kittens). He frequently borders his photos with brightly colored frames, such as the red one here. Through these formal devices, Lassry calls attention to the processes fueling the image’s production—an approach driven by his concern that “we have shifted to an immaterial time where the photo as a physical object has evaporated. . .The idea of an image meaning anything today is so exhausted that there is a need to relearn it.”