Janice Levy

Our Daily Bread

During my adult life I have traveled the world to explore other cultures. I have spent months in Europe, Central America, the Caribbean, and more than two years total in Madagascar. I photographed incessantly, seeking to capture something that would provide insight to each nation, its people, and, ultimately, to myself. My photographic mission has been to understand, through photographic documentation, what motivates human beings, how we are influenced by circumstance, and molded by the beliefs we are either born into or chose to acquire.

Coming full circle to examine elements of American culture was inevitable and predictable. What was not, was the form the images would take. After years of working with small- and medium-format cameras, using both black-and-white and color film, and printing in the darkroom, I "went digital."

The immediacy of the digital medium seemed appropriate to photographing a culture that has come to expect instantaneous results. I photographed practically everything I saw. After all, it's easy to do when hundreds of images can be stored on a media card the size of a Wheat Thin. But, I was hungry for something more than what just one single image could express, and I began to line the photographs side by side. This approach created new possibilities for formal and intellectual concurrence and resulted in the first image for which the exhibition is named.

"Our Daily Bread" is a collection of photographic tableaus that explore what sustains us intellectually, physically, emotionally, and spiritually in American culture. The images, taken from everyday life, are juxtaposed using irony, seriousness, and sometimes humor. They point out that what we believe in, and what sustains these beliefs, is based largely on surface and illusion.

Janice Levy