Michael G. Prais

Artist Statement

Reassembling photographs takes constituent blocks out of context while each and every piece of the photograph remains visible and each and every piece–and the whole–remains a photograph. Reassembly converts a single photograph with a single frame into hundreds of photographs with as many frames emphasizing the frame over content through repetition. The reassembly of photographs figuratively illustrates that photographs are immediately and forever taken out of context.

Artist Bio

Michael G. Prais grew up in suburban Dearborn, Michigan, the home of the Ford Motor Company, during the post–World War II heyday of the auto industry. As a visual person who has always been interested in how things work, he has moved easily between the concrete and the abstract. He enjoys helping others analyze functional explanations and naturally became a teacher helping others to understand and use abstract tools. He is fascinated by the interplay of the designed and the organic and examines both human constructions in nature and unexpected, coincidental arrangements of the unwitting human hand.

Out of Context (The Freeze), 2023