The Sleeper / The Great American Vernacular EncyclopediaTHOMAS BLOCK HUMERY

For more than a decade, Thomas Block Humery has been embarking on long, meandering missions across the United States with his 4×5 camera in tow, in search of nothing and everything. Guided by the whims of his eye or intuition, Humery strives to capture the latent transcendence of specific moments that are, alternatively, deceptively banal or traditionally sublime. This ongoing project, The Great American Vernacular Encyclopedia, refuses the sort of taxonomic hierarchy typically expected of such scientifically oriented surveys. Rather, Humery’s images, which float between the seemingly candid and self-consciously staged, are undergirded by a subliminal lexicon of compositional structures that upon extended viewing, begin to echo within the viewer’s mind, forever hinting at something that lies just beyond perception. “The Sleeper”, produced in Utah and during the difficult covid area, is the first volume of the series that will be followed in 2022 by two new volumes.