Now & Then and Book Project III are two series of new work by Suzanne Bloom and Ed Hill, the collaborative team known as Manual. Considered pioneers in the field of digital imaging, this year also marks a major milestone in Manual's career — 40 years of collaboration.
The high definition photographic work in both Now & Then and Book Project III represents a remarkable technical achievement compared with the primitive means of digital imaging first practiced by Hill and Bloom in 1985. At the same time, and in a merged gesture of homage and irony, the work in Now & Then utilizes this high resolution to focus on pre-digital, photographic technologies that had enormous impact on cultural communications in the 20th century and have largely been displaced by wireless social media in the 21st.
The work in Book Project III is an extension of Manual's on-going series, a celebration of The Book, now in its fifth year. The optically sharp, vivid photographs in this series give clarity to the physicality of printed books, which in turn remind us that a printed book is a unit of form and content, neither being disembodied from the other.
On view from March 15 through April 27.