Dylan Vitone

I always like to keep an eye on what the MFA, Boston is collecting and their annual report (which came yesterday in my mail) lists their acquisitions over the last year. This year it looks like they acquired four works by a young photographer, Dylan Vitone, including the image shown here of a Homeland Security drill (you can click on the image to see it larger). Dylan Vitone is a MassArt alumnus and he currently teaches photography at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. I first saw (and bought) his work at the annual MassArt auction this past April. He makes long panoramic documentary-style pictures by digitally "knitting" individual photos together. There seems to be a narrative (or narratives) in the photos and the process reminds me of a very high tech version of Hockney's photo-collages, except Vitone's work is seemless. He did a series of scenes of South Boston and more recently has been documenting Pittsburgh.

His work was at Photo Miami this year, but the booth's installation was really lackluster. On the outside wall (prime real estate), they enlarged one of his photos (actually of the image we own) and broke it into three separate pieces- totally destroying its impact.

Dylan Vitone has a great website:

http://www.dylanvitone.com/

He is represented by the Oswald Gallery in Jackson Hole, WY and DNJ Gallery in LA. The prints are done in two sizes, a smaller version in an edition of 30 (currently priced at $1,800) and a larger version in an edition of 5 (currently priced at $4,000). You might also be able to pick up his work at the next MassArt auction on 4/4/09.