Jim Lucio / RÉSUMÉ
Born 1965 in Salinas, California, the artist and graphic designer began taking Polaroids in the late 80s in San Francisco. He states that his Polaroid output was "sporadic throughout the 90s" during which time he lived in NYC. He re-discovered his Spectra when he moved to Baltimore in 2002, where he began observing and documenting the "interesting people" of "Charm City", as Baltimore is also known. Lucio explains that his work "revolves around identity, outcasts and visual excesses".
"Unsettling" is one of the main keywords describing his work. He states that his "Polaroid work is predominantly portraiture, leaning toward the melodramatic". Indeed the line differentiating his more straightforward portrait work from the melodramatic is unexpectedly thin. It's as if he opened a door which could make you alternately laugh and cry, your emotions running into one another.
Lucio's Polaroids seem to reveal things about his models which the individual would have difficulty discovering without him. His camera becomes a tool, an instrument that grubs within his subjects and reveals tiny hidden fragments of personality. The expressions and poses of his subjects seem to testify self-confidence and self-assurance, but it's the way the photographer captures them that raises the questions of authenticity and staged melodrama. Models - equally male and female - become prostitutes, monkeys, actors, animals, superstars, drug addicts, freaks, heroines, anti hero's, outsiders, insiders. The artist reveals of his models, what they may or may not be totally aware of and displays them in the extreme, but never answers the viewer's question: what is real and what is artificial?
"Unsettling" is one of the main keywords describing his work. He states that his "Polaroid work is predominantly portraiture, leaning toward the melodramatic". Indeed the line differentiating his more straightforward portrait work from the melodramatic is unexpectedly thin. It's as if he opened a door which could make you alternately laugh and cry, your emotions running into one another.
Lucio's Polaroids seem to reveal things about his models which the individual would have difficulty discovering without him. His camera becomes a tool, an instrument that grubs within his subjects and reveals tiny hidden fragments of personality. The expressions and poses of his subjects seem to testify self-confidence and self-assurance, but it's the way the photographer captures them that raises the questions of authenticity and staged melodrama. Models - equally male and female - become prostitutes, monkeys, actors, animals, superstars, drug addicts, freaks, heroines, anti hero's, outsiders, insiders. The artist reveals of his models, what they may or may not be totally aware of and displays them in the extreme, but never answers the viewer's question: what is real and what is artificial?
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