Dylan Vitone Featured on Carnegie Mellon's School of Design Site

Congratulations to DNJ Gallery artist, Dylan Vitone, for his recent review for "The Miami Project"!


Dylan Vitone, Car Shot, 2009, archival inkjet print, 15 x 60 inches

Professor Dylan Vitone’s Work Exhibited in Los Angeles

Dylan Vitone, associate professor of the School of Design, has his latest photography collection, “The Miami Project,” on exhibit this month at Los Angeles’s DNJ Gallery.

Vitone’s personal goal is to learn a visceral response to new cultures and groups of people. His photography is extremely successful at capturing a voyeuristic view of the social essence of a place’s ordinary people. His previous collections focused on Pittsburgh and South Boston, using black and white images to reveal the gritty working classes of these cities. “Working in the tradition of street photographers and social anthropologists such as Milton Rogovin and Bruce Davidson, Vitone makes extended portraits of communities through intimate observations of their everyday rituals,” said Leah Ollman, Los Angeles Times.

While similar in style to Vitone’s previous collections, “The Miami Project” shows an extremely different face of American culture. These color photographs capture a glossy, hypersexualized narcissism one might find in Miami. Subjects include body builders, bikini models, and attendees of porn conventions.

Although Vitone’s style might sound like photojournalism, it is anything but that. “There is a fine line between truth and artistic expression” Vitone explained. His photographs have a surreal quality to them that helps the viewer understand that his images are an expression of his own personal interpretation of Miami.

Like his past collections, The Miami Project features urban panoramas that are up to seven feet long and less than a foot high. He also includes long, vertical images. He keeps the seams of the photographs visible, paying attention to breaks in the photos so that the viewer can see his sleight of hand.

The exhibition of The Miami Project will continue at DNJ Gallery from September 11 through November 5th. Vitone’s work can be found on his professional photography website.

“The Miami Project” was originally displayed in October 2009 at the Pittsburgh Center of the Arts, where he was named Pittsburgh’s Emerging Artist of the Year.