Rian Dundon: Passenger

Riveting point-and-shoot photographs of Portland’s signs, streets and citizens

“Our setting is Portland, Oregon,” begins Rian Dundon (born 1980), in his foreword to Passenger. “The photographer is a 42-year-old divorced American dad. His family and city are splintering, but any feelings of regret are curbed by the thrum of money and capital moving the wheels underneath.” Using his trademark point-and-shoot Fujifilm XF10, Dundon has included here nearly 100 images of Portland and its inhabitants. The XF10 generally takes more time to operate than a single-lens reflex or an iPhone, which, in the artist’s words, “slows things down.” The resulting photographs, whether depicting an eerily lit bus interior, a graffiti-laden store window or the cops and protestors he documented so effectively in his previous book, Protest City, offer, in the words of the New Yorker’s Luke Mogelson, “curated portraits and scenes of unusual intimacy.”