Davies, Lucy, Roe Ethridge: Commercial Break, The ... - Greengrassi

forest devastated by logging. Dense clusters contrast with more sparsely flecked areas, and from a few
feet away the photograph has the erratic profile of a denial-filled polygraph session.
Other kinds of separations are indicated by images of commercial mini-mall signs. Borrowing from the
former Main Street idea of wooden shingles, the individual strip-mall residents list themselves on one
big roadside billboard. The odd juxtapositions – a nail salon, an off-track betting joint, a kosher diner, a
pizza parlour, a launderette and video game shop – are offered up for view with editorializing or
judgement in Cedarhurst Mall Sign (2004). They are facts of suburban American life, obviously
peculiar when extracted from their usual surroundings. Ethridge shoots the signs at an angle,
emphasizing letter shapes and colour choices, the eccentric line-ups supplying their own commentary;
liquor stores and weight-loss centres dominate. The particular economic moment of such signage
stands in contrast to Town and Country, Liberty, New York (2005), which shows a dilapidated
bungalow-style store in a bedraggled corner of upstate New York, with the words ‘Town and Country’,
aspiring to some upscale respectability, scripted across its rust-coloured façade. A young black kid sits
on the bench outside, and the image is bisected by a telephone pole bristling with American flags.
Alongside the exuberant strip-mall signs, the once aspirational, now passé script is like a young man
grown old.
Clearly referencing Thomas Ruff, the Bechers and especially Chris Williams, Ethridge also shows
unexpected painterly influences, particularly in his portraits. Holly at Marlow and Sons (2005) is like a
merging of a Madonna by Sandro Botticelli (in the tilt of the head, a gesture at once contemplative and
judging) and Jean-Luc Godard (the young woman an echo of Anna Karina, in her impenetrable,
futuristic black and white turtleneck) – in itself no mean feat. The blue-filtered Mary Beth Holcomb
(2005), with her downcast eyes and almost surreally truncated arm, could be a modern-day cousin to
Jan Vermeer’s women. Most unsettling and effective is the seemingly drab Rick Holcomb (2005). The
microscopically close image – you can actually see his contact lenses – shows a man with a squarish,
stubbled face, a sideward glance and open mouth approaching a smirk, as though he’s hatching some
plan. With the face slightly shadowed against a completely neutral grey background, Ethridge achieves
something close to a Caravaggian sense of emotional betrayal in what is essentially a head shot.
Paul Outerbridge is the steady backbeat to Ethridge’s work. Like Outerbridge, Ethridge incorporates
the ridiculous and the sublime, ignoring the artificial conceits that divide photography into fine art and
commercial work, embracing whatever will further his investigation into the singularity of the
commonplace. Ethridge assumes a certain sophistication of his viewer, born of familiarity with the
conventions of editorial photography. By showing tableaux of determined ordinariness, Ethridge
manages to convey the much larger context from which these are suggestive rather than definitive
extracts. The approach is playful, with a humour that mercifully softens the bleakness: what could be
merely reportage becomes.
Megan Ratner