The Hungry Years' collects Jack Pierson's 1980s photographs. Informed in part by his artistic emergence in the era of AIDS, Pierson's work is moored by melancholy and introspection, yet his images are often buoyed by a celebratory aura of seduction and glamour. Sometimes infused with a sly sense of humor, Pierson's work is inherently autobiographical; often using his friends as models and referencing traditional Americana motifs, his bright yet distanced imagery reveals the undercurrents of the uncanny in the quotidian. Fueled by the poignancy of emotional experience and by the sensations of memory, obsession, and absence, Pierson's subject is ultimately, as he states, "hope".
How do you feel?