| A lot of my older work is in my art archives. Here’s more recent work, in reverse chronological order. |
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Twenty-Two Pudgy Little Fascists For reasons known only to employees of the Kraft Foods [sic] Group, chemical engineers cast the wretched little Kraft Jet-Puffed Gingerbread Mallows in the shape of pudgy little fascists. I photographed twenty-two of them. (More ...) |
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Harriet, Grave of the Unknown Chicken There are chickens, and there are chickens, and then there are chickens. And then there’s Harriet. This is Harriet. (More ...) |
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Kittens. When I made my business card, I eliminated all the information the recipient already knew. And so, I ended up with a one-word business card, one more word than I needed. (More ...) |
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Segment of the Original Internet I obtained a cast iron segment of the original Internet from a trusted, clandestine source who assured me of its impeccable provenance. I donated the piece to the Internet Archive; I have no use for anything that’s no longer functional. (More ...) |
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Three Presidio Air Intakes I photographed three huge air intakes—what else could they be?—on three different government buildings. Each one was unique, but each one looked like Theodor Seuss Geisel designed it. (More ...) |
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Earthquake Detector (2012 prototype) It wasn’t what I originally had in mind, but I got tired of procrastinating so I added “(2012 prototype)” to the original title. Does it work? We haven't had an earthquake since I installed it, so I can't be sure. (More ...) |
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Pinus longaeva Does Not Care Bristlecone pines walked the earth long before Buddha, Ganesha, Jesus, Moses, et al did. Actually, that’s not true. Some of these ancient trees are over four thousand years old, but they never walked anywhere. That’s because trees don’t walk. Trees also don’t have eyes, so I don’t know how much they’ve seen, so this piece is entirely based on conjecture. (More ...) |
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Forty-Nine Cheerios Cheerios is (are?) a popular factory-made American breakfast cereal. They aren’t really round, but then neither is the letter o in many typefaces. After photographing the little pieces of chemical-laden oats, I manipulated them in my computer to make them rounder than real. (More ...) |
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Stereo née Mono Lake I was arrogant and stupid to rename California’s Mono Lake based on a couple of my photographs; that’s just the kind of artist I am.. (More ...) |
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Digital Artifacts (Sóror Mariana: peça em I acto) My learned friends at the Internet Archive have scanned every page—including the blank ones—of millions of books. I selected three seemingly blank pages scanned from an old volume, increased the contrast in my computer, and discovered lots of artifacts. The blank pages weren’t really blank after all. (More ...) |
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Pink Flamingo I have no idea why people wander around with eight-hundred millimeter lenses in inclement weather and/or swamps photographing birds. Every flavor of bird on the planet has been photographed, and photographed really well at that. When I needed a bird in a photograph, Jimmy Audubon didn’t object when I used one of his. (More ...) |
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States of Jersey: Twenty-Three Jersey · New Jersey Diptychs I photographed cigarette butts in Jersey, also known as the States of Jersey, the Isle of Jersey, Olde Jersey, et cetera. I was going to do the same thing in New Jersey, but once I arrived in Manhattan I decided that that was close enough to New Jersey, which was visible across the Hudson River. (More ...) |
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Looking at the Versos of Photographs: Eleven Pictures From the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art What’s on the back of famous works of art and/or photographs? I wondered that for years, but couldn’t find an administraitor at the San Francisco Museum of Modern [sic] Art with whom to coöperate. Peter Galassi of the real Museum of Modern Art in New York approved my project after I wrote to him. And so, I spent Halloween, 2011, photographing the versos of photographs reproduced in John Szarkowski’s seminal book, Looking at Photographs: 100 Pictures from the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art. (More ...) |
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Nineteen Protected Petabox Photographs This piece about intellectual property is one of my stupider ones. I set up my camera on a tripod at the Internet Archive and made a photograph of some of the organization’s servers. Eighteen other people pressed the shutter release, thus becoming the owners of the photographs they created. I copyrighted the set without acknowledging that the Internet Archive owns the copyright to the appearance of their servers. It’s a dog’s breakfast of conflicts that could feed a pack of lawyers for at least a year. (More ...) |
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Twenty-Three B Dock Gaps I walk on B Dock to get from shore to my boat. I noticed that the gaps vary in width, so I decided to photograph them. I couldn’t really photograph just the gaps, since they’re virtually black. And so, I photographed the gaps, but left a bit of wood showing on either side to provide scale. (More ...) |
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Petabyte Apple Server (Prototype) Internet servers are notoriously difficult to create and maintain. That's why I made a server that’s not connected to the Internet; it doesn't even use electricity. (More ...) |
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The Library of Babel II Borges created The Library of Babel; I created one too, or one II. (More ...) |
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The Davidian Calendar I concocted my own calendar, which is as worthless as it is pointless, and vice versa. Down with the Gregorian, up with the Davidian! (More ...) |
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Twenty-Five Kii-Katsuura Corrugated Metal Walls Being in Japan was a good excuse to make f64ish photographs I’d never make in the United States. (More ...) |
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Two Hundred and Fifty Pieces of Mona Lisa in Ten Reticulations This piece started out as a simple idea that proved difficult—or at least tedious—to execute: make photographs of each of the two hundred and fifty pieces of a Mona Lisa jigsaw puzzle then arrange them in ten grids. I can’t imaging why it never occurred to me that making and processing that many photographs wouldn’t take days. At least the tedium was worth it. (More ...) |
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Fifty Black and White States This silly piece is based on two definitions of the word state: “the particular condition that someone or something is in at a specific time,” and “a nation or territory considered as an organized political community under one government.” Silly redux. (More ...) |
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Thirteen Pacific Horizons Conceptual art is my weakest medium; here’s another example. It’s been two years since my last piece in the vein (vain?), so I may be learning to avoid this type of work. Maybe. (More ...) |
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The Oldest and Newest Photograph in the World, 20 September 2010 For a third of a second, the oldest preserved photograph (made by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1826) and the newest photograph in the world (made by me) coexisted in the same image. (More ...) |
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Fifty-One Trader Jose’s Salted Tortilla Chips Framed by Equilateral Triangles Sometimes I dermine the number of photographs in a series arbitrarily. For example, I made seventy-one photographs of Charles Shaw Wine Corks because that's a prime number, as well as my father’s age when he died. For the chips, though, I photographed fifty-one of them because that's how many photogenic ones I found in the bag I bought. (More ...) |
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Michigan School for the Blind, Michigan School for the Deaf Buelah, my grandmother, worked at the Michigan School for the Deaf. As a young boy, I tried to imagine what it would be like to live in a world as silent as a photograph. Later, I wondered if the Michigan School for the Blind was invisible to students there. Several decades later, I finally made a diptych showing both institutions. (More ...) |
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Agadir/San Francisco Sand Exchange A simple piece: scoop up a couple of kilograms of sand from a San Francisco beach, fly to Morocco, pour it on a beach, and photograph it. Then do the same thing in the other direction. A simple idea, simpy executed, perhaps too simply on both cases. (More ...) |
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Honey Renders a Precision Instrument Inoperative I took a functioning, obsolete camera and poured honey over it, then photographed the gears, shutter, et cetera. Since honey is transparent, the piece was even less successful than usual. (More ...) |
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Sixty-Four Foil Eyes Another simple premise: photograph sixty-four spherical pieces of stale, Halloween chocolate wrapped in foil imprinted with the image of an eye. Since the resulting photographs weren’t very good, I posterized them in an attempt to hide my lack of technical expertise. (More ...) |
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Retirement Plan (sketch) I probably shouldn’t publish this piece, it just might give some moron an idea for new legislation. (More ...) |
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Seventy-One Charles Shaw Wine Corks When asked if I drink Charles Shaw wine because it only costs $1.99 a bottle, I have a simple answer. Yes. I’ve saved hundreds of corks over the years, although I had no plans for them. I’m glad I did; they’re as easy to photograph as the inoffensive wine is to drink. (More ...) |
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Three Fort Mason Pyramids Just when I thought I was done photographing the parking lots outside my studio, government workers installed asphalt bumps to slow down speeding cars. I don’t know why they did this; I’ve never seen a reckless driver here. Similarly, I don’t know why they painted triangles on them, but I’m grateful that they did. (More ...) |
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Thirteen Hollywood Swimming Pools Hollywood is a grubby, polluted place with unbreathable air and handsome people with teeth even whiter than the cocaine they inhale. Swimming pools add to the glamor; I made thirteen images of them using satellites a safe distance away. (More ...) |
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Thirty-One Corncob Horizons I'm rather inefficient when it comes to harvesting corn from the cob. I photographed the remnants of my meal, which turned out to be a pleasing panorama. (More ...) |
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Sixteen Popcorn Kernels, Popped I’ve been planning on photographing popcorn for years. As usual, turning the idea into images wasn’t of much interest since I knew the photographs would look like puffy, white clouds. And, as usual, the photographs turned out to be unlike anything I’d anticipated. (More ...) |
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Twenty-Nine Madeiran Crosses I photographed the sidewalk when I went to Madeira. It wasn’t a very good reason to travel ten-thousand kilometers, and I don’t recommend that anyone else do so. (More ...) |
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Seventeen Fort Mason, San Francisco, Painted Rails I’ve always admired the old, steel train rails near my studio; they haven't seen a locomotive in decades. I’ve also appreciated the contrast between the steel and the relative ephemeral parking lot lines painted over them. I made forty-one photographs of them, and, after deleting any that were aesthetically pleasing, ended up with seventeen. (More ...) |
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Thirty-Six Modest Shrubberies Observed About Decker Island Decker Island is full of modest shrubberies. I photographed thirty-six of the tedious plants, and then experienced a severe lapse in judgment. After almost twenty years of resisting the tawdry siren call of gimmicky computer filters, I finally decided to use the insipid gimmicks. And so, instead of thirty-six bland photographs, I have thirty-six tarted-up bland photographs. (More ...) |
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Fourteen Oklahoma Highway Intersections Fourteen aerial views of Oklahoma highway intersections, posterized to distinct shades of grey, and presented inside fourteen golden rectangles. As boring as Oklahoma itself. (More ...) |
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Eighteen Coupled Black Beans (with Stains) I love black beans, so I decided to photograph their inky stains. The beans themselves were so attractive, though, that I decided to leave them in the final images, even though that resulted in photographs that were somewhat less boring than usual. (More ...) |
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Nine Pieces of Studio China The dictionary and my mother define china as, “a fine white or translucent vitrified ceramic material.” None of the “made in China” objects in my studio fit that description, not even the cheap soup bowl. My mother has her china; I prefer mine. (More ...) |
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Twenty-Three Cinematic Yosemite Panoramas I told my computer to enlarge some Yosemite photographs I had 22,500 times. My computer dutifully gave me some curious images. It’s pointless to look at these on the Internet since the subtle banding generated by working on a thirty-two bit image is lost, but the Internet is nothing if not a waste of time. (More ...) |
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Twenty-One Fort Mason, San Francisco, Parking Lines I remain fascinated with the new parking lot outside my studio; I never imagined painted parking lines could be so intriguing. (More ...) |
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Twenty-Two Commercial Paint Formulæ Mise en Scènes I selected the titles of sixty-six Kelly-Moore brand paints, added their hexadecimal and cmyk color formulæ, then arranged them in twenty-two triptychs. (More ...) |
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Two Sketched and Two Painted Arrows Arrows sketched and painted by paving contractors look even better than the idea sounds. (More ...) |
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Ten Pineapple Rings on Maui A can of Dole pineapple rings contains ten perfectly-machined (no other word will do) pineapple slices. Hence the ten photographs of same. I love it when the subject defines the piece. (More ...) |
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Eight Frequent Colors Eight Frequent Colors may, in fact, be six or seven colors, depending on whether black and/or white are colors. I know next to nothing about color theory, but then a chromophobe wouldn’t, would he? (More ...) |
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Eleven Chilean Circles Eleven photos of circles I found in Chile. I don’t like them very much; they look like photographs that are supposed to look like good photographs, which makes them not very good photographs. (More ...) |
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Nine Santiago Apartment Blocks Nine unremarkable buildings with two overlays of distorted maps of Chile. (More ...) |
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Eight Japanese Views, Thrice Removed I never tire of looking into a dear friend’s eyes. And so, I made several photographs of one of them; now I can look at her eye any time. |
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Seventeen Manhattan Windows
In April, 2008, I wandered aroud Manhattan for a week and ended up making lots of photographs of windows. I selected seventeen of them, and gave the set the obvious title, Seventeen Manhattan Windows. (More ...) |
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Mount Rainier Ale (sketch)
I started to make a model of Mt. Rainier using Rainier Ale cans, but I didn't get very far. That's why it's called a sketch; the title has nothing to do with pencils or charcoal. |
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Eighty-Four Things About Twelve French Girls
It’s really eighty-four things about twelve French women, but “girls” sounded a bit more French, a tad more ooh la la. (More ...) |
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Fifteen Bowlfuls (filler up, filler up) Why fifteen bowlfuls are represented by fifteen burnt match heads is something I can’t explain without going back to my teenage years. (More ...) |
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Thirteen Irradiated Wienerwursts
Thirteen formerly tubular sausages grotesquely disfigured by irradiation in a microwave oven. (More ...) |
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Lunar Target
A circular plane of undetermined diameter. The area, a one-meter deep layer of perfectly smooth lunar dust, serves as a target for meteors and asteroids, with any impact clearly apparent. (More ...) |
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Twenty-Two Lunar Features
Twenty-two photographs of lunar seas and marshes, made in part as an excuse to cite the original Latin names. (More ...) |
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Fuckeaters
Fuckeaters is a musical ensemble I concocted, complete with music I created and recorded. After recruiting three other musicians, I made a number of recordings working alone in my studio, and posted the songs here: fuckeaters.com. (More ...) |
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Eleven Popsicle Remnants
I made a dozen photographs of melted popsicles, then deleted one to convey an illusion of selection. (More ...) |
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Seven Frozen Meals Rich in Fat and Salt
I made these photographs without a camera by simply putting the frozen “meals” on a flatbed scanner. I originally planned on making more than seven images, but found the alleged food too unpalatable, even for me. (More ...) |
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Climate Change Documented: Eleven Alaskan Ice Cubes, from 27-31 May, 2007
I photographed ice cubes in Alaska, with the invaluable assistance of Dr. Min D. Rowse from the University of Anchorage. (More ...) |
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Sugarcubes Cubed
After Sol LeWitt died in April, 2007, I finally got around to making the sugarcube photographs I’d been planning for years. (More ...) |
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Twelve San Francisco Hotels
I photographed—in San Francisco—each of the twelve red, wooden hotels from my Monopoly game. (More ...) |
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Nineteen Recordings I Enjoyed as a Teenager
I photographed the grooves of individual compositions on the my old records that I haven’t played in decades. (More ...) |
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Therefore I Am
I mounted a hundred-dollar bill on a piece of paper above the words, “Therefore I Am.” (More ...) |
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©2013 David Glenn Rinehart |
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