PDN Photo of the Day

Primal Mysteries in Black and White

An exhibition of dramatic, black-and-white photographs by artist Victor Cobo is on view at ClampArt through August 9. “Remember When You Loved Me?” is Cobo’s first solo exhibition in New York City.

Cobo’s photography presents a dark, ambiguous world that borders on sinister. “At turns autobiographic and then entirely fabricated, he weaves blustery landscapes with high-contrast figurative imagery including animals, self portraits, and female subjects of adoration, awe, and dread,” states the press release. Hovering between lurid and playful Cobo’s melodramas show a pair of shapely legs in heels scurrying up (or down) a garden wall at night, rats with blazing eyes, a heavy metal mosh pit, an inquisitive squirrel, and many more mysterious scenes.

Cobo’s style and approach is born of both art history and his childhood. Raised by a Spanish mother and American father, Cobo is a self-taught photographer and draws inspiration from Surrealism, Film Noir, and German Expressionism. When he was four, his parents went through a tortuous divorce spurred by his father’s abuse of alcohol, heroin, and his mother. Cobo recalls time spent with his father during summer breaks from school: “Each day he would insist that we go out and take photographs of each other. Years later I realized the pictures he was making were illustrations of an imaginary relationship with me that he had created in his mind.”

“Remember When You Loved Me?”
By Victor Cobo
ClampArt
Through August 9, 2019

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