UNKNOWN 44 by Al J. Thompson

2024
From the series Devil’s Grin

Photo Tex print
Full color digital aqueous printing on textile
60 × 80 in
Strata edition of 1, with 1 artist proof
$900

Work print (WP)
8.5 × 11 in
Open edition
$195

“I think it’s a culmination of how I go about photographing life. I won’t be able to point you towards a specific example, because I have many. However, if I’m to choose it’s of my son and daughter...being able to look them in their eyes as if I’m looking at myself. I’m working on this long-term project that entails childhood and how I’m reliving my dream through the act of storytelling.” 

—Al J. Thompson, from his interview with Dana Stirling in Float Magazine

This photograph is of a fallen union soldier reenactor in Georgia and will be included in the artist’s book, Devil’s Grin, forthcoming at the time of Lucid Pleasure’s release. 

Al J. Thompson is a visual artist with an interest in narratives that explore the human condition living and working in New York City at the time of Lucid Pleasures. His rhythmic approach to photography envelopes people, places, and things that helps to generate poetic dialogue with subtlety—one that he perceives is consistent with the impression that all things relate. 

“I endure a lot of heaviness from this huge construct of society around us. I’d like to think that my photographs are mainly driven by my subconsciousness being able to communicate each time I find myself and a camera mingling with the outside world. There’s some truth to being an observer of things but not fully understanding what lies beneath the surface. Consider the fact that none of us fully understand who we are and what our ultimate home will look like after the transitional period of death; it personally fascinates me.

In the end my photographs are the antithesis of an opened book because each image contains an unsurmountable amount of layers. And as soon as you decide to put them together to read as a collective storyline you’ve just added another layer on top of that. This is in addition to the biased constructs within the psyche of each viewer, and how they go about interpreting these layers… the fundamentals of how I photograph consist of the way I view the world—a magical piece of poetry that consistently leaves me in awe.”

Al J. Thompson’s first monograph, Remnants of an Exodus (Gnomic Book, 2021), which examines the nuances and devastating effects of gentrification that continues to plagued communities beyond his own, has been included in the Library of Congress, Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), Suny at New Paltz, Yale University, Princeton University, Cornell University, Harvard University, Tufts University, Maryland Institute College of Art, UMBC, Cleveland Museum of Art, Savannah College of Art & Design, Missouri State University, University of Kansas, Viking Library System, Denver Public Library, San Francisco Public Library.  Thompson’s work has been exhibited in various galleries and featured in numerous publications, including Juxtapoz, Atmos, Vogue, British Journal of Photography, Houston Center for Photography, The New Yorker, Smithsonian Magazine, The Guardian, Booooooom, National Geographic Magazine, the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, Wallpaper Magazine, Float, Aperture, C-41 Magazine, Musee, Lenscratch, Lensculture, DIE ZEIT, Lucie Foundation, and PDN.

Work prints, also known as WPs, come in various styles—artists use them to work through ongoing projects. They are small and uneditioned.