Luke Austin, BFA Alumni announced as a Grant Recipient of the 2024 Creator Labs Photo Fund
Luke Austin, Cal Poly Art & Design Studio Art Alumni (Class of 2021), was recently announced as a grant recipient of the 2024 Creator Labs Photo Fund— a Google's Creator Labs and Aperture initiative providing financial support and visibility to encourage artists at formative moments in their careers. Inaugurated in 2021, the Creator Labs Photo Fund is now in its third season, continuing its mission of supporting image makers.
Luke Austin, Untitled, 2020, from the series A Dislocation of Time
Luke Austin
Near the end of 2020, stuck at home, Luke Austin experimented in the studio. Gathering self-portraits from men he followed on Instagram, Austin printed the images on paper, cut out the figures, and began a process of rephotographing the photo-sculptures he created. The two-dimensional became three-dimensional, then two-dimensional again. “There is something hollow yet rich about the silhouette cast from a cutout image of a person,” Austin says. “This work explores that, encouraging the viewer to look beneath the surface.” The series title, A Dislocation of Time, comes from a David Wojnarowicz journal entry; years later, it feels apt to the situation in which Austin made these images, as he reflected on a time-consuming process of photo-making, collaborating with men he met online while quarantining during a global pandemic. “I’ve spent the last few years thinking about the people who aren’t in my life anymore,” he says, “and I think subconsciously that showed up in the ghostly figured shapes and shadows in the works.”