Confluence
(excerpt from James Elkins’ foreword: Four Terms for a Strong Practice)
“Confluence and conflation. Photographs that are “complicated, disrupting, and compositionally satisfying.” I’ve been following Joseph’s work for several years, and I’d like to add four more words to the critical lexicon. These aren’t as pleasing as confluence or as aesthetic as composition. They may be the undercurrents, the harsher forces that make the images so consistently interesting. Without something darker, photographs like Joseph’s, which depend on unexpected composition, could become patterns or games. I think Joseph’s work is more involved and challenging, and these four words are the ones that come to mind with this new collection.” …
James Elkins, 2026
(E.C. Chadbourne Chair of Art History, Theory, and Criticism,
School of the Art Institute of Chicago)