Dash Snow. The name alone conjures a specific image, doesn't it? A fleeting glimpse of a downtown New York that's now more myth than reality. This new show in Paris, "Carrion," curated by Jeppe Ugelvig, presents Snow's Polaroids not just as art, but as artifacts. Ugelvig frames Snow within a historical context, alongside photographers like Brassaï and Atget, who documented their eras. But there's a crucial difference: Snow's work isn't just documentation; it's a symptom.
The article mentions Snow's "authentic, immediate and raw" style. It's easy to romanticize that, to see it as pure artistic expression. But let's look closer. These images, filled with "sex, drugs and violence," aren't just capturing a scene; they're reflecting a societal condition. Snow wasn't just an artist; he was a highly sensitive sensor, recording the decay of a specific cultural moment. Think of a Geiger counter, but instead of radiation, it's measuring societal entropy.
Ugelvig notes that Snow’s work prefigures the present day, with artists needing a larger dominion than just making art objects. This is where it gets interesting. Snow's "cult famous" status, as Ugelvig puts it, stemmed from his "street cred." That street cred, that embrace of decadence, was the key to his signal. It allowed him to access and record a particular data stream that the mainstream art world, and society at large, wasn't ready for. Was he ahead of his time, or a casualty of it? Perhaps both. As explored in Dash Snow’s Prophetic Polaroids of American Decadence, Snow's work provides a unique perspective on a specific era.
The question is, what was Snow actually measuring? Ugelvig suggests it's the "decay of American society, the decline of great cities." That's a broad statement. Let's try to quantify it. We can look at the rise of income inequality during that period (the late 90s and early 2000s), the increasing accessibility of drugs, and the explosion of reality TV—all indicators of a society increasingly obsessed with excess and spectacle.
Snow's Polaroids, then, become data points in a larger trend. Each image, a pixel in a larger picture of societal breakdown. The pregnant Jade Berreau, the vomiting Ryan McGinley—these aren't just shocking images; they're quantifiable markers of a culture that's lost its way. Think of it as a visual representation of a stock market crash: each photo a data point showing the rapid decline.
And this is the part of the report that I find genuinely puzzling: the continued fascination with Snow's work. Is it nostalgia for a simpler, grittier time? Or is it a morbid curiosity, a desire to witness the train wreck without actually being on board? Ugelvig says that Snow's work can be seen within the long continuum of art history. But it's more than that. It's a warning sign. A historical record of a very specific type of collapse. A collapse that, if we're not careful, could repeat itself.
