Brachfeld Gallery—Paris: PREVIOUSLY

TODD COLE — I AM YOURS TO KEEP
3—26 SEPTEMBER 2009
OPENING RECEPTION THURSDAY SEPTEMBER, 3
6—9pm

With I Am Yours to Keep, Todd Cole intends to reveal, to the ones who take time to see, a story about him. Originally shot to be published as a book, the images function like words, and the words put together create a visual poem. Indeed, I Am Yours to Keep is a metaphor about Cole’s teenage years trough his early twenties growing up in Houston, Texas, a period and a place in his life where he felt emotionally displaced, and sometimes hurted, while at the same time holding a strong desire to transcend beyond the known. The story—shot in southern California in the counties of San Bernardino, Fontana, The Redlands, and Riverside— is composed into three of the primary driving emotions he felt as growing up and continues to feel today living in LA: displacement, sexuality and transcendence.

Todd Cole’s photography tries to create with honesty and immediacy, images that are not loaded with history, or a particular contemporary visual language but break from some of the traditional visual signifiers in modern photography: a well defined subject within the frame, graphic compositions that lead the eye to the subject, or horizontal landscape compositions. His work has already been shown in Paris at colette (2003), and in Mexico City at Monclova Gallery (2005). In addition to the development of his personal work, Todd Cole’s photography features regularly in International magazines including i-D, Purple, Self Ser vice, 032C, New York Times T Magazine, Vogue, Fantastic Man, The Fader, Art Review, and Vogue Hommes International.