Lokuta, Donald — In Plato's Cave

New York, hpgrp gallery New York, 2011. Hardbound. Black boards w/ BW photographic DJ, [6] 122pp, 61 BW plates. From the gallery--The series of photographs, In Plato’s Cave, is about a world of illusion and belief. The photographs were inspired by the “Allegory of the Cave” in Plato’s Republic, in which Plato used the cave as a metaphor. Plato sees many of us as prisoners in a cave, only able to see distorted traces of reality as shadow figures cast on the cave wall. In Plato’s Cave captures the idea that we all live in a cave where, to one degree or another, we accept much of what we hear and see as the truth. The forty photographs in the exhibition are gelatin silver prints with the background painted out in black acrylic paint. The deliberate omission of photographed information is an expression of our inability to truly understand. For Lokuta the photographs are about the struggle between enlightenment and darkness. VG+/VG+ .