Charles Traub received his BA from the University of Illinois and his MS from the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology. There really isn't much biographical information about him...I believe he lives in NY, as he is represented by two galleries in NY (Gitterman and Daniel Cooney Fine Art. He is the President of the Aaron Siskind Foundation and the co-founder of the here is new york: A Democracy of Images.
The work I will focus on is his "Still Life in America". Here, he has taken images from all over the country and arranged them in a way that each one corresponds to its origin within the US. The images make up the outline of the USA.
The composition of this still life is very distinct, as it is clear what he is trying to display from the arrangement of the images. The compositions of the individual images are very diverse: from landscape, to portrait, to random shots of what ever he thought was interesting (large coca-cola bottle). His intention is clear: to show images from different parts of the world and to arrange them so that they correspond to the area from which they came. His method seems to be that he took many snapshots around the country of what ever he thought was noteworthy, and showed them to his viewers in the shape of the USA. It is almost like seeing the United States through his eyes. This is a cool concept and would be something fun to explore---maybe not taking his idea entirely and making the shape of the USA---but taking images of everywhere we go, so that others can see how we view certain parts of the USA and/or the world.
The diversity in subject matter and content is very interesting---it keeps the viewer clicking on the images, wondering what he/she will see next.
http://www.charlestraub.com/#
