Seeing the totality of modern popular culture as one whole, dissecting it, and re-attaching its parts is a wonderful and satisfying exercise. Years ago, before the first 'Polluted Culture' print, I did an image for a Mudhoney flyer depicting the Beatles as a grunge band...ripped jeans, Chuck Taylor's, and all. Here, I wanted to revisit that aesthetic in a sense. I chose to take the band that many feel are the modern-day torch bearers of the Beatles, U2. The imagery from the 1987 album, 'The Joshua Tree' was always very striking to me. The starkness and weighty aura surrounding the photographs of the band were almost religious...and actually very prophetic in a sense: this was the album that many feel rocketed them to 'biggest-band-in-the-world' status. To depict the Beatles in this modern 'clothing' was delicious. Pop culture belongs to you and me. We birthed it and groom it every day. 'We are the music makers and the dreamers of the dreams'. Culture is ours to hijack and choreograph. Past popular culture is our plaything. We can do whatever we want with it. You don't need a reason."
◇ After
The Joshua Tree (U2 album cover photograph, Zabriskie Point, Death Valley) · Anton Corbijn, 1987
Black and white panorama, the group massed hard against the left edge, the horizon falling just below their heads and two-thirds of the frame left to empty badlands. Different four men in black, one of them with his wife.
“After” is the old gallery word for a work made in open conversation with another. It is a lineage, not a shortcut.
Chronicles of 72
Jermaine Rogers in his own words, alongside research from the archive. Quoted material is reproduced verbatim, and every voice is labelled.
Jermaine Rogers
◇ Piece Room
No owners on the platform yet. The room is waiting for the first.