Parker Day: Icons

LA photographer PARKER DAY will be signing copies of her first monograph ICONS on Sunday, May 28th from 6-9P. Join us for a pop-up exhibition of her work. Don your most colorful & creative apparel for the evening. Official after-party downtown at THE REGENT.ICONS is a series of 100 semi-fictionalized portraits of LA’s eccentric personalities.I believe identity is a malleable construct that we have the power to dismantle. Through my photography I explore this idea of the invention of identity. I costume my subjects and craft narratives about the character they’re becoming. When they step outside of who they think they are, something more authentic comes through. It’s that presence of true emotion that I’m looking to capture in the trappings of a manufactured circumstance.Despite it’s saturated hues and often humorous subjects, there’s a darkness and a gentle undercurrent of rage that permeates my work. I’m interested in the idea that we have the power to shape our own realities but despite our abundant potential, we often feel beset by our circumstances. This gives rise to tensions and inner conflicts. It’s these feelings of frustration and the search for meaning I want to explore in the face of the absurdity of our existence.—Parker DayPARKER DAY is a Los Angeles based artist whose work explores identity and the masks we wear. Through costuming and exaggerated expressions, Day toys with the truth of who and what she portrays. She deliberately eschews Photoshop in favor of in-camera capture on film. Lurid color bathes her work and heightens the surreality of her subjects while the grain and grit of the photographs make them palpably real.