Weekend Portfolio: Curran Hatleberg

"Curran Hatleberg’s photographs are products of his extensive travels around the United States. Following his intuition, he records his observations of America’s landscapes, towns, and people, fusing the traditions of documentary photography and portraiture. In each new place he spends time getting to know its people—sometimes briefly, sometimes for months at a time. The portraits result from these relationships, and those depicted are actively involved in his representation of them. In the resulting images seemingly quotidian scenes take on surreal qualities as he locates the inexplicable details within the everyday. Although Hatleberg’s photographs are recognizable as America, there is a dreamlike ambiguity about the exact settings or narratives, preventing us from reducing these moments to offhand assumptions and leaving us open to the subjects’ lives. The artist aims to use photography to undermine bias and forge understanding across difference and distance."

-- The Whitney Museum of American Art

You can find more of Curran’s work here.