Of Days Gone By

-Gregory Eddi Jones

It’s inevitable. The day when we first notice the small folds of skin around the eyes, a sliver of gray hair, a sore knee. The passage between youth and adulthood is rarely defined by a single event, but little by little, its markers make themselves seen. Gradually, we shed the skins of our younger selves and leave behind certain things that, while in some ways always remain with us, nevertheless are gone forever.

As we age, we begin to mourn the lost days of youth. Days when we perhaps took for granted the freedom, the friendships, the fun trouble that we didn’t know we would miss the most. Recklessness gives way to responsibility, old friends begin to go their own ways. We keep the photographs to remember.

When we reminisce, we occupy one of two poles. One is nostalgia: the lingering appreciation for experiences we had and shared. The other is longing: those slight pangs of sadness that ping us now and then. Both arise as brief pleas for us to have a taste of those times once more. Each are feelings that sweep into us unexpectedly yet powerfully into the past.

In “Rad,” Barry Sutton finds a convergence of these ideas while considering the photograph as a keeper of memory. In producing this work, the photographer draws upon his own youthful experiences growing up near the beaches in Southern California, navigating its coasts as a fledgling photographer, and finding the right kinds of trouble to fill his time.

Drawing upon archetypes of young beach goers, skateboarders, concert goers, and more, Sutton keenly reminds us of the culture of youth, allures us by its fantasy, and lets us reflect on our own experiences and friendships from a time before. “Rad” - a term Sutton used frequently during his formative years, isn’t just an adjective but a sense of purpose. And it’s the experience, joy, and exuberance of youth that Sutton uses as a point of reflection in this work.

Sutton considers AI as something of a passport, a key that unlocks the exploration of new worlds found in the nexus of technology and imagination. It’s now through AI that we harness and unleash the power of imagination, and what better to imagine than those bygone days of bliss? This is one such promise and peril of AI, the immersion of fantasy has no depths, and the line between soothing and escapism is delicate to balance. For viewers of “Rad,” these are the boundaries through which we navigate.

The vernaculars of Sutton’s visual language sync flawlessly with the language of photography. Complex compositions and framing techniques define scenes flush with the details and minutiae that are synonymous with camera-vision. These images are not “photographic” for the sake of it, but use the photograph’s natural identity as a marker of history to reinforce the notion of nostalgia that Sutton intently seeks to explore.

In these visual conventions, Sutton’s work takes shape as a simulation documentary, cataloging moments and activities that exist, but simply not exactly in these ways. Subtle irregularities in human forms and gestures are found throughout these pictures, the signature of AI-generated images in 2023, which, as the technology continues to mature, will represent historical markers of the state of AI in this current moment of history. Like the fondest memories we carry of those we have lost, it is the quirks, flaws, and imperfections that we remember and cherish the most.

In “Rad,” we can consider the unique gap that exists between realism and memory, and how such chasms are magnified by machine-aided visions of both cameras and software alike.

Ultimately, Barry Sutton’s “Rad” seeks to reclaim a spiritual connection with lost youth. As we dig further, we find the project as a starting point to uncover a much deeper litany of relationships that exist between photography, technology, remembering, forgetting, fantasy, longing, and appreciation of days gone by.

-Gregory Eddi Jones