Murray Moss — Tertium Quid at Edelman Arts, New York

Thug's Eye View/David Floyd Camera Contraption

New YorkArt & Culture

What's The Story?

Murray Moss's paired up press photos uncover a whole new angle...

A press photograph is defined by its function, which is to add a visual illustration to the contents of the story copy. But if the link is severed between text and image, what happens to that image? What does it become? Murray Moss has been experimenting with that uncertainty during a two-year investigation into the archives of defunct newspapers. Moss has picked out the most interesting examples of press photographs he found, displaying them for the first time free of their original context and instead pairing them with another image – sometimes sympathetic, sometimes antagonistic.

His exhibition is entitled Tertium Quid, which translates from Latin as “a third thing” and refers to a third factor of unknown status in relation to a pair. So it is that his photographs, when placed in pairs, generate a third thing – a new story created by the images re-contextualising in their new relationship. In addition to this artistic consideration, Moss is also paying tribute to the dying newspaper industry and doffing his cap to the often unsung and unseen press photographer. The exhibition is being held at Edelman Arts in New York until August 15.

@EdelmanArts

Murray Moss — Tertium Quid at Edelman Arts, New York

Empire State Lightening Strike/Sermons from Science

Murray Moss — Tertium Quid at Edelman Arts, New York

Plastic Doodles/Not Trying to Set the World on Fire

Murray Moss — Tertium Quid at Edelman Arts, New York

Here’s smoke in your eye/Smokestack, Bethlehem Steel

Murray Moss — Tertium Quid at Edelman Arts, New York

Slowly but Surely/Leaning Towards Stanford

Murray Moss — Tertium Quid at Edelman Arts, New York

Adult Education/Betty Crocker Frosting

Murray Moss — Tertium Quid at Edelman Arts, New York

Cape Kennedy/Circular Feeling

Murray Moss — Tertium Quid at Edelman Arts, New York

Plastic Doodles/Not Trying to Set the World on Fire