Like Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters, (don't pretend you're too cool to get the reference), it's easy to blow by the Louise Brown Gallery in the Bryan Center and never know what you're missing. Right now, that happens to be the photography of Nathan Larson, a worthwhile 10-minute detour en route to get your daily fro yo fix.
Through his camera's lens, Larson assumes the role of social anthropologist. He begins with an examination of the religious paranormal in the form of a water mark that resembles either a water mark or the Virgin Mary. Our collective obsession with the unexplainable is his subject matter, and he draws on everything from fortune cookies that predict winning lottery numbers to the power of faith healing.
By approaching these phenomena as case studies rather than freak accidents, Larson raises his subject matter above the usual tabloid fodder. Throughout the series, the stark white text on a black background keeps even the conspiracy theory aspect of some of his pieces-maybe chips are being implanted in our teeth as tracking devices!-within the realm of scientific inquiry.
This, ultimately, is what is so intriguing about his work. As trained cynics, we are certain that the world operates in a certain way and that those who believe otherwise are gullible. Larson treats all beliefs as perfectly valid systems of thought, and his photographs are reactions to them, not judgments. His photographs point out the narrow-mindedness that can characterize our own lives if we let it. After all, as Larson's last photograph-a picture of him in front of 14 other Nate Larsons found via the magic of the Internet-points out, nothing in this world, from who we are to where we go when we die, is certain.
The photography of Nathan Larson is on display in the Louise Brown Gallery in the Bryan Center through Nov. 30.
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