Vegas (after Toulouse-Lautrec's 'Ballet Dancers') by Ian Epstein

There are writers who become writers by way of their own favorite authors. Filmmakers, fashion gurus and artists of all stripes alike usually cite influences from their chosen medium as important formative inspiration that help catalyze their careers. So one thing that immediately strikes me when looking at HHS! contender Ian Epstein's work is that his primary influences in his photographic work are are by and large painters—wielders of canvas, pigment and brushes, instead of the normally anticipated list of contemporary photographers. Speaking on his recent reading immersion into the world of postmodern art theory, Epstein writes on how the experience has been influencing his eye:

It has also led to a kind of hallucinatory confusion about whether rust trickling down old Chicago railway overpasses is just rust or an aesthetic phenomena akin to that sought out by Clyfford Still or Gerhard Richter. It has made me wonder if, like blank canvas, there is blank photography. Mostly, though, it has led to a body of work paralyzed by fracture, discontinuity and unfinished sentences trailing off with unpunctuated question marks that I hope keep a viewer's eyes moving.

Citing David Hockney's polaroids and the painter Gerhard Richter as inspirations, I can see how both the material and mental processes of both artists figure into Epstein's makeup. But, also evident in his submissions is a real facility with the specific texture and language of color photography as well as an innate formal appreciation for line and movement, which consciously or not might betray Epstein's Chicago roots (and for the better, of course: think Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, Kenneth Josephson).

In his image above Vegas (after Toulouse-Lautrec's 'Ballet Dancers'), I'm subject to several different sensory treatments at once: the finger pushing into the cold glass of the mirrored closet, the play of lights from outside the room interacting in a near intersecting grid of bright vertical strips and a sea of illuminated horizontal points, and then there's the physical space of the room receding in the mirror's view, filling up the rest of the frame with a very tangible wash of mixed fluorescent light. Perhaps it's his training in theater and performance that allows him to find these seeming "sets" among real life, or maybe it is being able to think about photography like a painter after all.

Ian Epstein's work and words can be experienced more fully on his website.