Caleb Cole’s work focuses on themes of identity, isolation,
and search for self identity. Other People’s Clothes is a body of work in which
Cole explores his fascination with people’s daily lives. He admits that when he
is in public he watches people engaging in their daily routines and wonders
about the lives they lead and how they experience the world around them. Cole invents stories about these people’s
lives and then photographs a scene from their imagined day. In each photograph,
Cole starts with an outfit of clothing, then a person he imagines would wear
these clothes, and then creates a scene where that person would act out a
moment in their daily routine. Even though Cole is the one wearing these
clothes, I don’t think of these images as self-portraits. Rather they are images
of private moments of unknown people, imagined characters that Cole encounters
and brings to light.
Odd One Out is a series that grew out of found photographs
purchased from antique stores and estate sales. The original photos are
generally of people during special events (weddings, reunions). The images are
selected because of one person within the images who does not fit in, one
person out of the many who is not a smiling face. The photos are then digitally altered to isolate
the person from their surrounds by a field of white. The white field maintains
the shape of the crowd. This serves to highlight the person who feels invisible
within this group.
I find both of these bodies of work intriguing because of
the imaginative story telling that Cole does with these photographs. We don’t
know any of these people, in Other People’s Clothes we are witnessing a private
moment in a fictitious life of an unknown person, yet as a viewer you are still
able to connect with that person. In Odd One Out the cutout crowd is what
initially caught my attention. In my own work I deal with feeling of isolation
and insecurity. I have been interested in using cutouts in some way. Cole has
managed to beautifully integrate these two ideas.
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