Tim Davis

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Tim Davis examines the increasingly vivid presence of commercial interests in small-town America. Photographing at night using only the available light from nearby street lamps and parking lots, Davis explores how illuminated retail signs leak into consumer consciousness and literally reflect upon the American landscape. Illuminated Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonalds, KFC, and Jiffy Lube signs are found reflecting off of houses in small towns or suburbia. Davis states, “In all my work, light is cultural and political. It is put there by someone for a purpose—to invite citizens to share their money with corporations, to keep workers working, and to, in a sense, visually describe democracy.”

BIOGRAPHY
Tim Davis (born, Malawi, 1969) is an artist and writer living in Tivoli, New York, and teaching photography at Bard College and Yale University. His latest show, The New Antiquity was exhibited at Greenberg Van Doren Gallery in New York, September to October, 2009. He is the author of five books of photographs: The New Antiquity (Bologna: Damiani, 2009), My Life in Politics (New York: Aperture, 2006), Illuminations (New York: Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, 2006), Permanent Collection (Portland: Nazraeli Press, 2005), and Lots (Paris: Coromandel Express, 2002). He is also the author of two books of poems: American Whatever (Washington, D.C.: Edge Books, 2004), and Dailies (Great Barrington, Massachusetts: The Figures, 2000). In New York, is photographs are in the collections of the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as the Hirshhorn, Washington D.C; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the High Museum, Atlanta and many other museums. He has had solo exhibitions in New York, London, Los Angeles, Chicago, Brussels, Geneva, Atlanta, and Miami. Davis was a Discovery Award finalist at the 2004 Arles Photography Festival and was the Joseph H. Hazen Rome Prize Fellow in residence at the American Academy in Rome in 2007-2008. He is represented by Greenberg Van Doren Gallery (NY). See www.davistim.com for more information.