Curated by Karen Sinsheimer, Kathleen Howe, and Britt Salvesen
When John Divola began his career in the late 1970s, the lines between art photography and photography as art were still clearly drawn, and he played an important role in their subsequent blurring. In the early images of vandalized homes for which he became known, and which will be featured in the Santa Barbara and Pomona portions of this three-part retrospective, the secondary records of Land art or performance art would seem to have become the primary event. And even in his more conventionally picturesque Polaroids of studio-made tableaux from the ’80s, the photograph documents the action of making the image—something is always happening, as when flour is thrown at a painted backdrop to evoke fog. Divola’s first major museum survey, aptly titled “As Far as I Could Get,” has been a long time coming.
