Joel Daniel Phillips

Lot #59
Killed Negative #25 / After Carl Mydans, 2020
Charcoal, graphite & ink on paper
12 x 16 x 2 inches
Courtesy of the artist and Hashimoto Contemporary

About the Artwork

Killed Negative #25 is one of a series of Joel Daniel Phillips’s charcoal and graphite drawings meditating on photographs censored by the Farm Security Administration (FSA) during the Great Depression. In early 2019, Phillips stumbled on a photograph by Walker Evans with a giant, black, Baldessari-esque circle marring the center of the image—one of many FSA-commissioned photographs “killed” by FSA head Roy Stryker with a hole punch to the original negative. Phillips’s Killed Negatives explore Stryker’s destructive editing process as a commentary on truth and the veracity of the historical record. Translated into drawings, the physical subtraction of the hole-punch acts as a visual addition, an indelible record of the shaping of the narrative. Phillips has exhibited across the United States and abroad, including at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK; and Tacoma Art Museum, WA; among others.

Retail Value: $1,600