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This is the case when Doherty photographs stylized arrangements in the studio, but also when he takes unposed images outside it, and “Dream About Nothing” includes examples of both. In one image, five garlic bulbs packed in a snood of grocery-store netting are positioned vertically against a stark white background, with a stubby vine of wilted red trumpet flowers propped against it, facing downward. The assemblage is so humble as to amount, at first glance, to nearly nothing, and yet it is also a poignant vignette, the garlic stack’s upward sweep barely resisting the dying bloom’s drag. In another image, Doherty captures, in extreme closeup, the hard, yellowish crust of a scab marring a patch of light freckled skin. The image is gross, but there is also something alluring and even sensual about it—the red puckered edges around the scab proffering it like a shiny gem, set in a prong. This jewel-like iridescence is repeated across many of the pictures in the book: in an image of a white cat with one blue and one hazel eye; in that of a dewdrop-laden bud, nearly touching the tip of a finger; or in one of a bunch of silvery fish heads, their dead eyes gleaming. There is also a fuzzy outline of a thatched-roof shack in a greenish mist; a trio of obscenely pink dumplings, snug in a bamboo steamer; and a well-fed toddler’s face, crumpled as if on the verge of emitting a cry.
In his commercial work, Doherty works digitally, but all the images in the book were shot in 35-mm. film, a technical choice that the photographer appreciates, partly, for its unexpectedness. “You never know what you’re going to get,” he told me. “It’s a crapshoot.” This embracing of chance pushes against the sense of control the photos convey. “I want someone to look at my pictures and have questions—what’s posed and what’s real, what’s sincere and what’s not,” Doherty said. His images can be seen as an “index of nonsense,” he went on. But that, too, is part of his credo. “I like to show people a card and then throw it away, pretending it doesn’t mean that much to me,” he said. “But it always does.”
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