honorable mention
Dave Vescio united states
Photo © Dave Vescio
title
"The Spirits of Route 66" series
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 main goal for taking macro/close-up photographs of abandoned antique motor vehicles that are decaying away along the Historic U.S. Route 66 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 antique motor vehicles (like the ones who bent the metal to create the automobile to the ones who actually had to paint it), plus, the universe's energy source called sand, wind, sunlight, and rain (that has been hitting this motor vehicle for five to ten decades straight) are transferring all their different energy sources into one another and somehow someway are 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?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
