{"id":68377,"date":"2025-07-14T13:49:44","date_gmt":"2025-07-14T17:49:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/?p=68377"},"modified":"2025-09-13T21:50:48","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T01:50:48","slug":"photos-as-art-geometric-compositions-of-spare-beauty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2025\/07\/photos-as-art-geometric-compositions-of-spare-beauty.html","title":{"rendered":"Pastel Colors, Geometric Compositions"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It is rare to receive a gift in the mail as pristinely attractive as Phil Scalia’s immaculately produced Utification,<\/em> a chapbook of 28 remarkable photographs he took in Utica, New York, between December 2017 and July 2020. Published by Oblong Box Press, it is dedicated “in memory of my favorite walking neighborhood along Columbia and Lafayette streets in old downtown Utica, demolished by Mohawk Valley Health System, 2019-202O.” The three spreads below, excerpted from the interior pages, give an idea of the chapbook’s spare beauty with its pastel colors, geometric compositions, and moody precision. I love ’em.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Click the images to enlarge them.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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It is rare to receive a gift in the mail as pristinely attractive as Phil Scalia’s immaculately produced ‘Utification,’ a chapbook of 28 remarkable photographs he took in Utica, New York.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":68376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19,26,4,23,17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-68377","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-art","8":"category-books","9":"category-main","10":"category-news","11":"category-political-culture","12":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/utification-3-750.jpeg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-hMR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68377"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70072,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68377\/revisions\/70072"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}