Triptych Photographs Rock Bottom by David Hilliard

Entitled "Rock Bottom", this triptych photographs were by American photographer David Hilliard (born 1964) in 2008. These chromogenic prints were face flush-mounted to aluminum frame for seamless display. They are signed, titled, dated and numbered '6/12' in pencil on verso of one print. Each sheet / flush-mount measures 24 x 18 in.
Rock Bottom by David Hilliard is arguably the artist's most recognizable and celebrated work from his oeuvre to date. Hilliard masterfully utilizes a unique, multipaneled technique, as seen in the present work to create expansive photographs depicting moments of love, family, adolescence, friendship, and explorations in masculinity that are all personally connected to the artist's lived experience. In the present work, Hilliard is shown at right and his father, Ray Hilliard, at left partially submerged in water with a mountainous, wooded landscape behind them. Both men are separated by the landscape's physical space and the divides of the panels.
Hilliard photographed his father for decades and when discussing Rock Bottom, Hilliard wrote 'Rock Bottom was my attempt to draw physical and emotional comparisons between my father and me. I am genetically hardwired to become him, physically and, on some level, psychologically. I am the best and the worst of this man. I honor him by marking my body with the same tattoos he received while in the Navy in the 1950s. They are swallows, birds that return to the same place every year after migration. They always come home. People have said this image looks like a time-lapse of a man aging from right to left. A kind of physical and emotional metamorphosis. I never thought of that while creating the image, but I love that reading. It's kind of true. For me, it's about the passage of time and the divide between us. There are things that separate us, things we do not agree on or have in common. Yet we will always be connected—by genetics, love, and the earth we traverse. I love this photograph, these three moments that make up a continuum' (R. Hilliard, 'Rock Bottom,' Art for This Moment, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston, Massachusetts, June 15, 2020). An edition of Rock Bottom is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and was included in the exhibition "(un)expected families" hosted by the Museum from December 9, 2017 through June 24, 2018.