The Photographs, so far

This catalogue raisonne marks the first comprehensive exhibition of photographs by Jim Dine. Since 1996, the internationally acclaimed artist has used cameras and lenses to make images that he has turned into prints using heliogravure and digital ink-jet processes as well as conventional color and black-and-white photographic printing. Combining his zest for image making with a long devotion to self-expressive materiality, Dine imbues his photographs with an intensity that is occasionally traumatic but invariably beautiful. Dine's photographs present a familiar repertory of images: tools, hearts, and a torso of Venus as well as the more recent iconography of a crow, a skull, a Pinocchio doll, and an odd-couple ape and cat. For Dine photography is one among other media, the camera but one of many tools with which to make pictures. This refusal to privilege one method over another helps explain how, in the space of only six or seven years, Jim Dine has managed to produce such a large number of haunting photographic images that remain consistent with the tenor of his art as a whole while expanding its technical repertoire and range of possibilities.