Dust
In his first gallery show, Russell Katz’s Explosions and Trees worked side by side to effectively “stop time.” Russell based his Trees on photographs by the French photographer Eugene Atget. Atget took his photos of Paris around the time of the first World War in an effort to preserve the city he grew up in during a period of dizzying progress. For him, and for Russell, trees represented a meditation on change and stability, existing honestly and freely in their environments, living on a time scale that humans can rarely grasp. Other photographers of the era approached this question from another angle; from the front lines of the war. They risked their lives to capture the unbelievable power of human technology, photographing the utter destruction and the world blowing apart. This was the focus of Russell’s Explosions series; the unstoppable progress of mankind frozen in the moment of its peak ruinousness. By presenting his two series side by side, Russell freezes the images in time, effectively leveling the instant destruction of the explosions with the slow generosity of the trees, encouraging his audience to consider the various rhythms and flows of life.
