Ariel C. Wilson: Bad Moon Photos

Sanitary Tortilla Factory is pleased to present Bad Moon Photos, a large-scale photographic installation and participatory project of Ariel C. Wilson.

It is nearly impossible to take a good photograph of the moon with a cell-phone camera, but that doesn’t stop us from trying. In the summer of 2021, Wilson began soliciting bad cell-phone photos of the moon from friends, colleagues, family, lovers, and strangers. Since then, over 1,000 low-res images have been submitted to the live and growing collection. Bad Moon Photos has become an archive of collective failure, desire, and resistance. Together, the images celebrate the actions of many over the work of the solitary artist, disregarding boundaries between professionals and amateurs. These images reflect a shared impulse to use our cameras to preserve vast objects of our love and longing—the moon included. Photographs inherently compress, reduce, and abstract their subjects. The moon resists capture, often appearing as an oblong spot in the field of black, or a tiny spec in an expansive blue sky. Despite our predictable failure, we can’t help but keep trying.

This exhibition highlights a selection of images and videos from the archive, focusing on submissions from New Mexico residents and neighboring communities. Wilson prints each image or sequence of images like family snapshots and displays them in a loose constellation on the wall. Some are printed as large-format adhesive vinyl photographs and adhered directly to the wall, becoming a backdrop for others images while exaggerating their low resolution. Short videos play on iPhones, recording the phone camera’s inability to focus or properly expose for the moon. Visitors are invited to use a small printer in the space to contribute their own images to the archive and the walls of the gallery, completing the exhibition through their own participation.