Untitled (My pleasure) 1977

Curator: The stark contrast in Bill Dane's "Untitled (My pleasure)" really grabs you, doesn’t it? Editor: It does. I’m immediately struck by this sense of displacement, this layering of image upon image. The pyramids looming behind gaudy tourist billboards… it feels like a commentary on the commodification of ancient cultures. Curator: Dane’s work often explores these tensions between the authentic and the manufactured. He’s very interested in how these images shape our understanding and experience of places. He’s questioning who is centered and who is being erased. Editor: And the lone figure beneath the billboards… is that a worker? A tourist? It’s unclear, but they seem dwarfed by the scale of both the pyramids and these constructed representations of them. It really highlights the power dynamics at play. Curator: Right. And the black and white adds to the sense of timelessness, yet the billboards themselves feel very temporal, almost disposable. Editor: It's like a snapshot of a culture caught between reverence and exploitation, presented in a very humble manner. I'm left feeling more unsettled than pleased, as the title suggests. Curator: Indeed, this interplay between the image and our expectations is quite telling. Editor: A potent reminder of how we engage with history and its representations, then.