Michael Itkoff

July 14, 2008

Wrecked is the most recent project of Michael Itkoff , a project that covers an interesting [if I may say it like that] tradition in Pennsylvania and New Jersey (USA).

The Bad Boys, Derby Boys, and All Banged Up are demolition derby teams from Pennsylvania and New Jersey. During the summer months members of the group work on junked cars with the intention of entering them into competition. Derbys consist of one or more 'heats' where cars or trucks ram into each other until only one is able to move. An ambulance and fire truck is always on hand to evacuate injured participants and control any fires that may break out. The demolition derby combines the love of cars with the love of destruction. Although this tradition may become threatened by dwindling oil supplies, in the mean time, the sound of revving engines and crunching metal will continue to emanate from rural America. - Wrecked, Michael Itkoff.

Michael is one of the founders and current editor of Daylight Magazine and a photographer that has shown, from his wining stake at Hey, Hot Shot in the Spring of 2006, the consistency to produce high quality work. Daylight Magazine is the publication of Daylight Community Arts Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the use of photography as a tool for effecting social change. In his work as editor and founder, Michael exemplifies and support the concept of "photography with a purpose".

You will find at his website a number of interesting series from street portraits to landscapes [as in portraits of the land]. I can't but smile when I see the subjects in front of a small white board from his Street Portrait series.

from Street Portraits © Michael Itkoff

Street Portraits consists of photographs taken in five cities around the world since 2002: London, Sydney, Hanoi, Bangkok, and New York. The project originated from a desire to subvert the artificial hierarchy created by celebrity photography and advertising. Billions are spent every year in order to show us faces and products in clean controlled studio settings. In response to this, I took a large white board representing a studio or gallery wall and placed it behind ordinary people on the street. - Street Portraits, Michael Itkoff.

Of all his work, the one I find most fascinating is the series overgrowth. I truly love these images. These pictures convey both solitude and presence, the struggle of nature fighting with the urbanized society. Places that are usually ignored but are transformed in images that I will remember.

from Overgrowth © Michael Itkoff

These are photographs of a landscape under siege - meditations on the mesh of human society and nature that exist woven together. Within the overlooked pockets of greenery there is life, and hope, that the tide of concrete and steel is high. A city or suburb allowed to lie fallow for twenty years would soon be swallowed by bushes and wildflowers poking up from gaps in the pavement...- Overgrowth, Michael Itkoff.

Miguel Garcia-Guzman

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