Toys R'Us Customer Pickup by Darrius Thompson

Darrius Thompson's Toys R' Us Customer Pickup is spare in subject and composition but long on possibility. On one level is the frank presentation of a bland, if not unsightly, scene. A steel door is barely demarcated from the surrounding surface, the side or back of a major retail store. The asphalt comes right up to the edge of the building save for a small patch of concrete. The few other details are pedestrian; the stain on the door is perhaps the most compelling detail of the overall picture.

This attention to the banal and ugly has a proud pedigree in modern photography. Lewis Baltz turned his camera on the unexpressive surfaces of corporate buildings in his landmark The new Industrial Parks near Irvine, California, published in 1974. This would soon be succeeded by the New Topographics exhibition and catalog (of which Steidl has also published a volume dedicated to the show and its legacy). This attention to the ready-made environment at hand transformed photographic practice in allowing the quotidian and distasteful as legitimate subjects for depiction and consumption. Darrius is clearly embracing this tradition in its entirety.

Darrius has more work up on his site as well as a blog and resource site, urbansand, both worth checking out (including interviews with 20x200 edition-maker Michael Lundgren and contender Bryan Formhals).