Random Access: Photographs by John T. Hill

Random Access is a collection of John T. Hill’s photographs taken over 70 years, showing the remarkable scope and empathy of his vision. Hill’s consistent focus over the decades has been what he calls “found compositions,” recording “chance happenings that strike a personal chord.” From a street scene in S�o Paulo in 1958 to the interior of a Queens taxi in 1970, from John F. Kennedy at the podium of a 1960 rally to punks in Trafalgar Square, from Walker Evans’ home to recent landscapes and still lifes, his work is democratic, curious, all-embracing. Hill celebrates the contradictions and imperfections of his subjects, engages but never sentimentalizes, and is careful to never impose a singular interpretation onto the viewer. Here is none of the self-congratulation of “Look at what only I can see,” but rather an open invitation for the viewer of “This is what you are also capable of seeing.” The eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts. - Walker Evans