Blackstar.jpg
IntheCompanyofPaintings-7.jpg
IntheCompanyofPaintings-13.jpg
Blackstar.jpg
IntheCompanyofPaintings-7.jpg
IntheCompanyofPaintings-13.jpg

★ (Blackstar), 2025

$1,440.00

Oil on canvas, 24 × 48 in © 2025 J.M. Bond.

A female photographer raises a box camera with a phosphorous flash, the moment of ignition caught as a flare of fire and smoke. The slower, volatile technology lends the scene a ceremonial weight, suggesting witness rather than intrusion. Title references Blackstar by David Bowie, evoking ritual, finality, and the end of an era in photography.

Oil on canvas, 24 × 48 in © 2025 J.M. Bond.

A female photographer raises a box camera with a phosphorous flash, the moment of ignition caught as a flare of fire and smoke. The slower, volatile technology lends the scene a ceremonial weight, suggesting witness rather than intrusion. Title references Blackstar by David Bowie, evoking ritual, finality, and the end of an era in photography.

Exhibition Description:

You arrive into light.

Her flame is slower, deliberate—smoke rising with ceremony. The phosphorous powder burns too fast to repeat, but long enough to sanctify the frame and consecrate the moment. You feel seen, not seized. It is witness, not ambush.

Then the bulbs strike. Harsh, instantaneous, flooding the stairwell with white. The first flare felt singular; now it multiplies, relentless, repeating you into something you never agreed to. The image isn’t yours anymore.

The old ritual dies in brilliance and leaves only smoke—something happened on the day it died. What replaces it is colder: privacy stripped and presence transformed into spectacle. The lens doesn’t just capture you; it exposes you. And as the light blinds, you know the ceremony of phosphorous won’t return.