Jeffrey Moser, Jonathan David Price and Julie Schustack

Obscure Cameras, October 2012

This October, Grizzly Grizzly presents a group show of sculptural works dedicated to the imagemaking machine. In "Obscure Cameras", Jeffrey Moser, Jonathan David Price, and Julie Schustack take you behind the lens, staging the space between the eye and the click, by shifting our customary photographic focus from the recording to the recorder.

Jonathan David Price's sculptures put the camera in repeat. Each camera is like a horse on a carousel, a redux of the zoetrope (in which images spin to create an illusion of movement). The work suggests a chilling narrative of multiple views, of surveillance. Jeffrey Moser delves into the phenomenon of the inverted image when creating his camera boxes. As flipping a view upside-down is a fundamental component of the way all cameras function, the very foundation of photography is rooted in image manipulation. Moser's work begs the question, "if the primary effect of the lens is to bend the light and manipulate the image, how does any photographic image have any credibility at all?". Julie Schustack's found object cameras transform mementos into memento-making-machines. Friends sent Schustack everyday objects; she turned these items into fully-functional cameras. Once constructed, the cameras were returned to their original owners and used to take their portraits. Both images and camera were then sent back to Schustack, reuniting "recorder" with "recorded".

Jeffrey Moser lives in Lancaster, PA, and divides his time between Central Pennsylvania and Newark, Delaware, where he teaches Photography in the Art Department at the University of Delaware. Recently, his work has been exhibited at Light Factory in Charlotte, NC, Delaware Center for Contemporary Art in Wilmington, DE, and York Arts in York, PA. Moser earned a BA in philosophy from Millersville University, and an MFA from the University of Delaware.

Jonathan David Price is based in Maine, where he works both as an artist and as a program supervisor at SpinOff Studio, a non-profit center dedicated to the art-making of adults with disabilities. He holds a BFA from the University of Southern Maine. Price's work has been shown at multiple galleries in Maine,including The Map Room and Geno Gallery in Portland, and the Center for Maine Contemporary Arts in Rockport, and also in Chicago, IL and Alexandria, VA.

Julie Schustack's work has been widely exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently at The Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston, Massachusetts, Seattle Design Center, The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, Pennyslvania, and Abiko Cultural Center in Chibo, Japan. Schustack lives and works just outside Los Angeles, CA, where she teaches ceramics at the University of Southern California and Loyola Marymount University. She received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.