Inner City

“Mills is a good enough picture maker to intrigue us and yet he is determined to keep us on the edge of unknowing.” – Anne Tucker

Joseph Mills is a mid-career artist who has produced three distinct but interlocking bodies of work. He is best known for his surreal photomontages and collages. The other two series are the ongoing affair, through photography, with his wife; and his black and white street work, the latter of which are featured in his first monograph, Inner City. People and their detritus are the focal points of these pictures. His subjects are not Washington’s elite, but those whose situations in life are more peripheral and vulnerable: children, street prophets, the homeless and the mentally unstable. The resulting pictures are both about the inner city life he records and his own internal conflicts. Printed on outdated paper and heavily coated in amber toned varnish, Mills’ photographs become objects, “windows onto some world that really wasn’t out there.” Published in association with Hemphill, Washington, DC, to coincide with one-person exhibitions at the Corcoran Gallery and Hemphill Fine Art. Essay by Anne Tucker.