Parting Shot

by Brian K. Mahoney, July 30, 2009

The scope of David Halliday’s interest is broad: The New Orleans-based photographer shoots portraits and landscapes, as well as curiously enigmatic still lifes that reference Mannerists like Parmigianino but tug in an unsettled, modernist direction. The poet and critic Alfred Corn, in the book accompanying Halliday’s recent retrospective at Carrie Haddad Photographs in Hudson, describes Halliday’s work as a continuum of self-aware conundrums. “The designation ‘still life’ implicitly suggests one of the goals of both painters and photographers dedicated to the genre: They want to imbue the inanimate objects they depict with the vibrancy of life despite the immobility of the medium,” writes Corn. “Like the great painters of still life—Zurbarán, Chardin, Cézanne, Morandi—Halliday charges his fruits, vegetables, and other objects with a poised intensity that intrigues us partly because possible meanings are just out of reach.” Halliday is represented by Carrie Haddad Photographs. Portfolio: www.davidchalliday.com.