Steven Arnold’s playful and electrifying tableaux vivants incorporated elements from silent film, the Golden Age of Hollywood, Surrealism, and mysticism. His assemblages are whimsical, sharply contrasting, and delightful for a lover of film history. They are musingly clever and dreamy, evident of a masterful and fantastic touch. These stark black-and-white images exude a quality of theatricality and wild expressiveness, a sense of mischievous quixoticism, which is so striking as well as charming. I wish there were more contemporary artists like the late Steven Arnold. His wonderful photographs put me in mind of a still version of the work of filmmaker Guy Maddin.
