09 Jun 2019

Tommy Mintz

Hudson Guild Gallery

Reviewed by Saul Ostrow

Start with Baudelaire's flaneur, who walks the city observing those around him. Add to this the opening scene of Dziga Vertov's Man with a Camera, where the protagonist, like a giant, looms over the masses. Now recall the debate between Einstein and Henri Bergson concerning time as the site of simultaneous events, each having, or not, its own space.

These have in common with the photographs of Tommy Mintz the question of whether the observer is an active participant or a passive spectator. We viewers must simultaneously think of ourselves passing through time and space as well as being carried along by it. Mintz's specially constructed camera takes multiple time-lapsed exposures - each interval it arrests is marked by changes. These come to be either superimposed onto one another or juxtaposed. In the resulting collage-like snapshots and panoramas, we find in the jumble the incidental narratives of everyday life unfolding before us.