Doherty pushes his precise visual language to a place of incomprehension and unconscious association, in a bold sequence of singular image arrangements.

Individually, Bobby Doherty’s photographs are quite clear. In front of you, a flower, a drinks can, a courgette, next an alloy wheel. But collectively their meanings become distort- ed. A photo of a popsicle carries a different weight once it is opposite a battered butterfly. But what are you meant to be looking at? Doherty’s images attempt to overwhelm the viewer with questions about what we consider mundane, and what we view as special, in order to ask a greater ques- tion: one that transcends “why this over that” but instead, “why anything at all?”

Doherty takes this question more seriously than the ser- otonin colours and satisfying framing of his images may suggest. Across five years of continuously photographing within and without the studio, Doherty rhymes images into a place where their categories break down. These pictures ask us to feel, albeit somewhat uncomfortably, the essence of a photographic voice, pulling at the seams of visual categories, asking both more and less of us from each photograph. From the big to the small, the broken to the pristine, Dream About Nothing shows Bobby Doherty making magic, as he rushes to the next photograph, waiting for you to turn the next page.

Bobby Doherty (b. 1989, Brewster, New York) is a pho- tographer living in Brooklyn, New York. Doherty’s work is characterised by a meticulous approach to composition,
and an eye for minute detail, incorporating still life, observa- tional photography, and digital composition. His commercial clients include Louis Vuitton, Apple, Off White, Swarovski and Mac Cosmetics. He was staff photographer at New York Magazine from 2013 to 2018. His first book Seabird was published by Loose Joints in 2018.

140 pp, 240 × 305 mm
70 colour plates
section-sewn hardcover