It doesn't take long to recognize that ultimately these photographs aren't really about basketball courts at all, but about the city that surrounds them. Within their self-imposed framework, these photographs deliver a wealth of observation. Rows of windows climbing the façade of an apartment building, each the repeated echo of the backboard below. The busy, arching branches of winter trees tracing across the frame, set against the immobile geometry of the key and the three point line. Shadows dappling the court, giving us the hint of what lies just beyond the edge of the image. Brick and glass and concrete, surfaces and textures that are part of the invisible background as we make our daily rounds, emerging here as part of the vital grid of the city. Perhaps most important is Johnstone's thoughtful and practiced use of color - something far more easily said than done - to bring a subtle but luminous glow to his images.
Charles Johnstone's series is currently on exhibition at Joseph Bellows Gallery in La Jolla until Feb 25, 2011.
Joseph Bellows Gallery
7661 Girard Avenue
La Jolla, CA 92037
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