UNTITLED by Ben Alper

2020
From the series Conflation
Archival pigment print
16 × 24 in
Edition of 3
Available as print only or framed

Ben Alper's series Conflation is a series of digital composites that originate from multiple images of the same object or space. Depicting marginal or derelict urban sites, the pictures represent a patchwork of decisions made behind the camera. While these pieces upend traditional notions of the singular photographic trace, they nevertheless constitute a series of imprints. They attempt to synthesize redundant, often ordinary photographs into something transcendent. By layering, erasing and cutting away to reveal information below, these hybrid works vacillate between presence and absence and construction and deconstruction. Stepping away from the medium’s subtractive character, the pieces in Conflation turn toward an additive approach to image-construction. However, with each accumulated layer, a new kind of collapse occurs. The result is a formal and conceptual flattening, a tangle of images still tethered to their source, but fundamentally changed.

Archival pigment prints use refined pigment particles to create exquisite, high-resolution artwork. This printing method creates museum-quality artwork designed to last; ink and paper are critical elements in an archival pigment print’s life span.