Ari Salomon: 6 Feet Apart

Ari Salomon: 6 Feet Apart by Aline SmithsonJuly 10, 2023

©Ari Salomon, 6 Feet Apart, Circle Sampler Grid, Pigment Print, 2023

This week we are featuring projects seen at the Medium Photo Portfolio Reviews.

If a future anthropologist were to go back in time to 2020 and look for clues to a world wide pandemic, the masks and gloves and hand sanitizers would be deep into landfills, but the mark making instructions of how we were to conduct ourselves, might still be present. When the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) asked us to remain 6 feet apart from other people, a new term was introduced into our vocabulary: social distancing. Beyond the Saturday Night Live pool noodle solutions, the rest of the world began to create a series of symbols that altered normal behaviors.

Artist Ari Salomon has created a project of unique typologies that reflect the symbols created to assist us in staying covid-free. As the world returns to some new form of normalcy, these remnants become part of our histories, paint and tape etched into sidewalks and floors. In viewing a collection of this new language, Salomon moves these humble gestures into a new artform of street art. The work is expanded by a zine and unique installations.

6 Feet Apart

I created this typology to investigate the ubiquitous ground markers directing us all to keep 6 feet apart to prevent the spread of Covid-19. These markers are often just a single piece of tape adhered to concrete and distressed from months or years of being stepped on.

This photographic method of collecting, sorting, and classifying is a reflection on the scientific processes we are relying on to fight this pandemic and also the tedious nature of many of the life changes we have had to endure. New information becomes apparent in the context of these groupings. Contrasts and similarities reveal beautiful variations as the eye tunes into this minimal landscape. I value how the distressed qualities of the images are a reflection of the passage of time during the pandemic.

Using a detached, documentary style offers an opportunity for viewers to reflect on the quiet moments as well as the irony of working together by staying apart.

©Ari Salomon, 6 Feet Apart, Line Grid, Pigment Print, 2023

Ari Salomon’s work is rooted in reinterpreting the tradition of street photography. He takes the performative process of discovering candid people and places and gives it a conceptual twist. He is also interested in how photography can reveal the nature and limitations of human perception.

He was born in Israel, raised in San Diego and now is based in San Francisco. He studied with Victor Burgin and Geoffrey Batchen at U.C. Santa Cruz focusing on both contemporary art theory and studio photography.

He has had solo shows at the SFMOMA Artists Gallery, Transmission Gallery, Adobe Arts, Kyotographie KG+, and 4×5 Gallery. Internationally, he has exhibited in Tokyo, Kyoto, Paris and Poland.

He has been a member of the Bay Area Photographers Collective since 2006 and helped organized many exhibitions with the group.

Follow Ari Salomon on Instagram: @arisalomonart