Les Krims 1975

Mike Mandel made this baseball card of Les Krims at some point, but the date isn’t listed. You know, it looks like it was made using pretty straightforward photographic printing techniques. The way that Mandel deploys grayscale tonality in this image is really interesting, because it’s kind of like the values are flattened. You could say that it has an interesting texture that way, like a collage made of different densities. I love the way the shadow behind him has this same kind of flatness, which gives it an almost graphic quality. It reminds me a bit of the work of John Baldessari, in that the work uses fairly conventional techniques to make pictures that are visually very straightforward, and also slightly unsettling. There’s a feeling of ambiguity here – is it a wry comment on the commercialization of celebrity, or an affectionate and sincere portrait? I think it’s probably a bit of both, and that’s what makes it stick in my head.