Edmund Teske 1975

Mike Mandel made this photo-based work, "Edmund Teske" sometime in the 20th century, and it's all about a kind of playful juxtaposition. The palette is strictly monochrome, which makes you focus on the textures and the staging of the image. Look how the soft focus makes the background trees almost disappear, pushing the foreground elements – the figure, the baseball glove, that great beard! – right up against the surface. It is almost as if Mandel is highlighting the materiality of the photograph itself. This isn't about capturing a moment, it's about constructing an image, a playful fiction. Notice how the baseball and glove draw your eye, but the name "Edmund Teske" above creates a kind of cognitive dissonance. Mandel’s work reminds me a bit of John Baldessari, in that both artists use image and text in ways that disrupt conventional ways of seeing and thinking. It invites us to question the stories we tell ourselves through images, and to embrace the ambiguity that lies at the heart of all representation.