John Parkes
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I have been taking photographs since the late sixties and have been with The Elaine Fleck Gallery for over five years. Much of my shooting has been done in both Los Angeles and Toronto, two cities with an endless supply of inspiration. Recently, I have been further inspired by three weeks in Europe and the fact that I now call Mexico City home and will do so for at least the next three years.
I am fascinated by the very transitory artistic possibilities that exist in walls full of deteriorating posters, hand bills, and graffiti - found 'collages' where the unlikely juxtaposition of text and images says a lot about the city and the people who live there. What fascinates me most is the ephemeral nature of my subject matter. None exists for very long and a return to the site of an image usually finds it gone, scraped off or papered over.
As well, I love to shoot architecture, but in ways that make people see things differently - as abstract art made up of angles and reflections.
No matter what I am shooting, my goal is to capture images that make people take a second look at things they walk by and ignore every day, and to appreciate the beauty and art that is everywhere in the big city.
