Doug Harvey’s Moldy Slide project began with a chance discovery of a cache of discarded amateur photographic transparencies dating to the 1970s in the piles of material being disposed of during an apparent hoarder intervention. The once personal narrative contained in the travel photographs had been altered, obscured and even destroyed by the natural processes of decay and the ravages of time in a manner analogous to the effects of memory loss. Harvey performs an act of détournement (cultural intervention) by turning this pile of refuse back into a commentary on cultural amnesia and decay by using the apparatus originally intended for nostalgia. In its performance iteration Harvey projects a curated sequence of 150 images in a slideshow accompanied by live improvisational noise music, taking on what art critic Shana Nys Dambrot called “a conceptual/semantic level, introducing issues of authorship, truth, transcendence, intention, control, chaos, narrative, meaning, and analog physicality” in a “larger conversation about photography in the digital era.”

The disoriented temporality and indeterminate authorship of the Moldy Slides are taken to a new level through their realization in this collaborative print edition. The four images in this suite have been selected by Harvey and The ƒ/Ø Project from the artist's current slideshow performance. They are titled with reference to major aesthetic touchstones of German Romanticism (Goethe, Beethoven, Caspar David Friedrich, and The Brothers Grimm), adding another dimension of ahistorical nostalgia to these already complex artifacts.

This suite of Harvey's images was made using an experimental hybrid technique designed specifically for this project, combining 19th century carbon transfer printing with early 20th century color offset technology. Each layer (red, blue and yellow) is coated onto the paper separately and combined to a reasonable facsimile of the original. Traces of the process are evident around the edge of the image where remnants of the materials are visible and in the physicality of the paper upon which the prints are made.

About the Artist: Since graduating with an MFA in painting from UCLA in 1994, Doug Harvey has written extensively about the Los Angeles and International art scenes and other aspects of popular culture, primarily as the art critic for LA WEEKLY, the largest circulation free weekly newspaper in America, and Art issues, the highly respected LA-based journal of art and contemporary culture. His writing has also appeared in Art in America, The New York Times, The Nation, Modern Painter, ArtReview, and numerous other publications. He has written museum and gallery catalogue essays for Jim Shaw, Jeffrey Vallance, Camille Rose Garcia, Tim Hawkinson, Don Suggs, Lari Pittman, Georganne Deen, Rick Griffin, Gary Panter, Margaret Keane, Big Daddy Roth, Thomas Kinkade, Basil Wolverton and many others. Harvey’s curatorial projects have ranged from many traditional gallery exhibitions (including two museum-scaled Annual LA Weekly Biennials - State of Emergence and Some Paintings at Track 16 Gallery in Los Angeles, Don Suggs: One Man Group Show at OTIS (co-curated with Meg Linton), Heart and Torch: Rick Griffin’s Transcendence at Laguna Art Museum (co-curated with Greg Escalante), and the legendary Aspects of Mel’s Hole: Artists Respond to a Paranormal Land Event Occurring in Radiospace at Santa Ana’s Grand Central Art Center) to CD compilations of sound art, programs of found and experimental films, performance events, experimental radio, artist’s comic books and zines (including Less Art which continues to be published sporadically, and most recently was transformed into a radio program on pirate station KCHUNG), the global self-replicating curatorial project Chain Letter (which shut down the freeway exit at Bergamot Station Art Complex) and an LA solo gallery exhibit determined by raffle. He has also been part of the curatorial collective creating the exhibition content and design at the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, CA. Mr. Harvey also continues to maintain an active art career, exhibiting his visual art (painting-based multimedia) locally and internationally, and participating in international experimental sound, radio, and film communities, as well as regularly teaching in both studio practice and art theory and history contexts. His diverse oeuvres were the subject of the survey exhibition Untidy: The Worlds of Doug Harvey at LA Valley College. He lives and works in Los Angeles.