A Review of Broadway Boogaloo by Blake Andrews

This squat hardback features color photos by Ecstatic Light Photo documenting taxi cabs in his native NYC. If you already have a mental image of these familiar objects in your mind, it will be soon subverted by Dunn’s photos, which apply a variety of techniques for impressionist effect. There are long exposures, photos shot through water or mist, pictures taken through frosted or carved glass, reflections, over-exposures and pictures focused outside of DOF, zooms, pixelations, posterizations, and digitized enlargements. There are probably other methods too. I’m only listing the ones I can recognize (easier to identify in the book than actual taxi cabs?). Dunn’s approach is textured, blurred, and abstracted, leaving a string of dreamy frames closer to Joan Mitchell than Robert Walker. Recurring yellow tones help hold the sequence together, but just barely. There is no supporting text or captions, just a watery rainbow of images. Some are nothing more than color fields or light streaks.

So these ain’t your father’s standard New York taxi cabs. Great. But do they work as pictures? Yes, to an extent. But they will mainly appeal to adventurous readers open to experimentation. The photos require a mental leap, and I suspect most casual browsers will be put off by the book’s impenetrable strangeness. But for those with an open mind who invest some time, these photos are fun, surreal, and rewarding.

This is the first and only physical photobook I’ve seen by Dunn. But there are plenty more where this one came from. His site lists 75 self-published photobooks, with others in the pipeline. Dang, my boy’s been busy! After publishing so many, he must have the logistics down to a science. Most books are rooted in NYC, with a smattering from Japan and other locations. They sample a range of styles, but at a quick glance most of the back catalog seems more conventional than Broadway Boogaloo. This one is pretty out there.