William E. Jones
Restaurant, Canton, Ohio
In Restaurant, Canton, Ohio a convenience store offers food, liquor, and Coca-Cola to an empty street. A series of boarded-up storefronts marred by peeling paint conveys a sense of the pre-or post-apocalyptic—the hush just before or after a disaster. The reds, pinks, and oranges of the buildings give off warmth, but the absence of human activity makes the glow eerie and strange. Once a booming steel town, Canton is now struggling, and many of its buildings have been neglected for decades. While the location of William E.Jones’s photograph is specific, we can’t help extrapolating to imagine any Main Street, USA, that has been left to atrophy in the wake of big industry gone bust.
Los Angeles-based artist and filmmaker William E. Jones appropriates vintage film material that he rearranges into new compositions. Often concerned with the way gay imagery was depicted in 1970s and 1980s, Jones’s early films explore the complex configuration of homosexual identity with a rather nostalgic and romanticized gaze. Though fashioned in the same way, his later pieces look more directly at pornography and the appearance of fetish in popular culture.