The photography of Roe Ethridge (born 1969 in Miami, lives and works in New York) encompasses a study of genres, the recent history of photography and his own practice as a fashion photographer. Like
Josh Smith in painting and
Kelley Walker in
Appropriation Art, Roe Ethridge belongs to a generation that has extricated itself from the straitjacket of progress and modern changes and managed to open a new chapter in the field of photography. Landscape photography and still lifes, original images and images borrowed from the print media, abstractions and illustrations are placed side by side to create a recognizable world which moves freely from one photographic genre to another—from documentary to the most formal photography.
In the last ten years Roe Ethridge has covered all the genres—nudes, still lifes, cityscapes, country scenes, portraits, collages, etc., thereby creating a body of work that strives for consistency by exploring sensibility so as to arrive at a powerful conceptual project.