LEAVE ME WANTING YOU
Todd Edward Herman
Locals Only Gallery, Caruso Lounge (West Entrance)
January 12th – February 17th, 2024
LEAVE ME WANTING YOU is excerpted from my ongoing project SANCTUARY.
Sourced from photographs made by myself, family members and generated from the surfeit of imagery found in AI datasets, the images included in LEAVE ME WANTING YOU are sometimes theatrical and absurd, while at the same time appearing to be observational. Each image reenacts a peripheral or imagined moment from a childhood filtered through archives of familial relation and photographic convention. Each reenactment of a personal history suggests that of a networked or collective one.
The organizing principles of this work are often contradictory, revising my own memories, sometimes articulating a layer of unexpressed emotion, at the same time upending the very methods of my revision. As autoethnography, these images push the limits of their own credibility, falsely insinuating the position of a photographer who is neither entirely present as subject or author, while alluding to a long list of feelings and understandings and stories of affiliation and conflict that are not completely fictional.
I hope that in some way viewers can join in my appreciation of this.
—Todd Edward Herman 2024
About the Artist:
Todd Edward Herman is a visual artist and curator. He is the founding director of East Window Gallery and co-founder of Sins Invalid Performance Project.
Todd has been the recipient of many awards for his work including the San Francisco International Film Festival’s New Vision and Golden Gate Awards, the Art Council of Northern Ireland’s Artist in Residence Award, Grants from the San Francisco Film Arts Foundation, the Boulder Colorado Arts Commission, a Western States Regional Media Arts Fellowship, Taipei Artist Village Residency, and the San Francisco Art Commission’s Emerging Curator Award. He has presented his work at such venues as RedLine Contemporary Art Center, The Dairy Arts Center, Leon Gallery, The International Film Festival Rotterdam, San Francisco International Film Festival, Southbank Centre, Anthology Film Archives, San Francisco Cinematheque and Pacific Film Archives.
“At our best artists question habits of understanding, looking, and storytelling; investigating how personal and historical forms are constructed rather than fixed. For me, this means finding new ways to generate work that examines how images compose, enforce, or undermine — rather than simply reflect — ideas of history, embodiment, dominant values, authenticity and authorship.”