honorable mention
Dave Vescio united states
Photo © Dave Vescio
title
They're Always Watching Me
All the above photographs were shot & edited with an iPhone 6 Plus camera.
Dave Vescio is a visual artist whose work explores the metaphysical relationship between matter, memory, and energy through the medium of photography. Rooted in entropy, elemental force, and spiritual encounter, his practice transcends traditional photography. He treats the camera as a ritual process—invoking non-human presences that emerge through the slow decay of industrial materials.
His work is grounded in a layered cosmology, where spirit is immanent within the textures and residues of the material world. Light becomes a portal, glass a threshold. Rusted metal and corroded surfaces act as vessels for subterranean energies. Across these strata, spirit-forms flicker into view: some luminous and transitional, others embedded in ruin, time, and psychic sediment.
Vescio began his career in performance and experimental film, appearing in over 45 independent features including Hick opposite Eddie Redmayne, before a formative two-year collaboration with Paul McCarthy on the experimental films CSSC and DADDA. Immersed in McCarthy’s psychologically charged process, he shifted from enacting archetypes to channeling spiritual presence itself, moving behind the camera to document energies rather than portray them.
Working with weathered glass, rusted metal, and corroded rubber, Vescio captures what he calls Spiritography: visual encounters with presence embedded in decay. These are not digital constructions but discoveries, with only minimal tonal adjustments. Each work becomes a threshold—where light and entropy reveal beings or resonant forms.
Each image is printed on materials that echo its source: glass-based works on museum-grade acrylic, metal-based works on archival aluminum. This material continuity collapses the boundary between subject and surface, turning each piece into both a relic and a witness, charged with presence.
Contact information: https://www.davevescio.com
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entry description
My goal with my up-close & personal urban decay shots is: How do I make the old, ugly, and the discarded look beautiful, strong, and colorful again? And why do I see faces everywhere I look? Who is always watching me? Are they spirits or other worldly beings like the supernatural? Or did the people who originally make these objects – like the steel dumpster, the asphalt parking lot, the metal sign, the billboard poster, or even the graffiti tag – transfer their energy source somehow someway into these original objects, and then all of these different human energy sources in all of these different original objects (which have been decaying away on top of each other for years or decades at a time) are now forming into a brand new source of energy / life and that is what we see instead? And how do I properly capture these *new beings* in their true essence, full of color & full of life?All the above photographs were shot & edited with an iPhone 6 Plus camera.
about the photographer
Dave Vescio | SpiritographyDave Vescio is a visual artist whose work explores the metaphysical relationship between matter, memory, and energy through the medium of photography. Rooted in entropy, elemental force, and spiritual encounter, his practice transcends traditional photography. He treats the camera as a ritual process—invoking non-human presences that emerge through the slow decay of industrial materials.
His work is grounded in a layered cosmology, where spirit is immanent within the textures and residues of the material world. Light becomes a portal, glass a threshold. Rusted metal and corroded surfaces act as vessels for subterranean energies. Across these strata, spirit-forms flicker into view: some luminous and transitional, others embedded in ruin, time, and psychic sediment.
Vescio began his career in performance and experimental film, appearing in over 45 independent features including Hick opposite Eddie Redmayne, before a formative two-year collaboration with Paul McCarthy on the experimental films CSSC and DADDA. Immersed in McCarthy’s psychologically charged process, he shifted from enacting archetypes to channeling spiritual presence itself, moving behind the camera to document energies rather than portray them.
Working with weathered glass, rusted metal, and corroded rubber, Vescio captures what he calls Spiritography: visual encounters with presence embedded in decay. These are not digital constructions but discoveries, with only minimal tonal adjustments. Each work becomes a threshold—where light and entropy reveal beings or resonant forms.
Each image is printed on materials that echo its source: glass-based works on museum-grade acrylic, metal-based works on archival aluminum. This material continuity collapses the boundary between subject and surface, turning each piece into both a relic and a witness, charged with presence.
Contact information: https://www.davevescio.com
back to gallery
