Lew Thomas
"Ruler", 1975
Black and white photographs
Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art Collection
Gift of the Las Vegas Art Museum, 2021; Gift of Patrick Duffy and Wally Goodman, Goodman Duffy Collection, 2006.
2021.08.103

“If there is a code to my photography,” wrote Lew Thomas in 1971, “it is clarity—work detached from the ... influences of good taste and mystery.” The “clarity” of Ruler sets us up to work our way through a series of illusions, as the object that appears to be a life-sized ruler turns out to be a composite artwork made from five different photographs. A crucial figure in the Bay Area photography scene of the 1970s, Thomas created a body of work that used black and white imagery to draw attention to photography’s artificiality, testing its ability to carry or reject meaning, reference, and the movement of space and time. He was an active promoter of other photographers’ work, co-founding a publishing company devoted to experimental photography and curating the landmark group exhibition, Photography and Language, at San Francisco’s La Mamelle Art Center in 1976. (DKS)