David Taylor

(American, b. 1968)

After A Moment (artist’s book), 1994

enlarged pages from After a Moment (artist book), 2003

enlarged pages from After a Moment (artist book), 2003

Lead covers with a cloth binding enclose the 11 front-and-back pages of David Taylor’s After a Moment. The protection is significant as it holds appropriated images from the Federal Civil Defense Administration of a mannequins’ dinner party affected by a nuclear blast. The lead’s toxic properties are equally relevant given the book’s emphasis on danger and mortality. In addition to the dinner party, other images seen in repetition across the inkjet printed pages come from Edward Alcamo’s AIDS: The Biological Basis and Ian Tattershall’s The Encyclopedia of Human Evolution. Taylo also appropriated the text in After a Moment (or else paraphrased it), using the accounts of soldiers who witnessed Nevada’s nuclear tests, evolution scholar Ernst Mayer, and an HIV positive man and his friend.

Taylor holds a BFA in studio art and photography from Tufts University and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1989), and an MFA in visual design and photography from the University of Oregon (1994). Solo exhibitions include High Water at Northwest Museum of Art and Culture, Spokane; Add:Delete at the Society for Contemporary Photography, Kansas City, Missouri; and Irresistible Forces at Obscura Gallery, Portland, Oregon. Taylor’s work is in the collections of the Portland Art Museum, Oregon; Texas Woman’s University, Denton; Washington State Arts Commission, Olympia; and El Paso Museum of Art. He has been a professor at New Mexico State University, Las Cruces since 1999.

—Kendra Greene

Gloven, Ron. “Beyond novelty: new digital imagery and Terraform 1 at the Henry Art Gallery”. Artweek. Vol. 32 no. 2 (February 2001) p. 27

Weinstein, Joel. “Denton, Texas”. Art Papers. Vol. 24 no. 4 (July/August 2000) p. 42-3.

http://mocp.org/exhibitions/2003/03/beyond_digital.php