Huger Foote Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1961 -

PHOTOGRAPHER HUGER FOOTE

The combination of color, composition, and light transform mundane objects into large-scale observations of the world around us in Huger Foote’s photographs. Foote is notorious for wandering back alleys, deserted roadways, abandoned lots and desolate commercial areas with his camera. He is a keen observer of the commonplace, and captures that overlooked, unusual beauty through his lens. Whether the focus is on chicken wire entwined with an overgrowth of bright yellow wildflowers or the shape and texture of cherry red cushions, he demonstrates the value of giving everyday objects a second look as works of art.

“...If you look through his photographs backwards and forwards you can feel the tension of mysterious hidden story, one that keeps emerging and vanishing. A light that could be the ordinary light of an ordinary day in an ordinary place, suddenly radiates a dangerous quality. Huger is a storyteller.” - Bernardo Bertolucci

"These photographs show someone directing his life towards organizing the frame, to put things in order. A dedication to looking. Artists are about changing our world. That’s what art has always been about, making some distant viewer conscious of a way we see the world. I’m quoting a friend of mine, Tom Young. He said, 'Bill, our role as artists is to change the way people think about our world.' He was getting this from Franz Kline and Jackson Pollock. When Huger takes pictures, he’s kind of illuminating little lights out there, and he can make them shine.” - William Eggleston

“He fixates on these details almost as a child might, gazing unblinking with amazed, naïve eyes so that all of a sudden the banal is made beautiful, the neglected quintessential. The ordinary, or even the ugly, take on a new wonder of their own.” - Rachel Cambell

In the end, Foote tells a story of humanity through his images of the ordinary, conflicting viewers with both a feeling of familiarity and detachment.