Around the 2020 and 2024 US presidential elections, I felt exhausted yet spellbound by the flood of media coverage. Compelled by a sense of dread and restlessness, I photographed the stream of images on my screen.
Across double-page spreads, television stills are collaged with 1950s biblical illustrations of the Apocalypse. Amplifying basic elements of mass media reproduction—LED pixels and halftone dots—I transform data through aggressive enlargement and physical manipulation during scanning. Signals become distorted, truth and meaning are stretched and skewed. The result is a fever dream evoking the religious fervor of politics, and reflecting a landscape of paranoia, misinformation, injustice, and corruption.
In the Bible, Patmos is the island where John the Apostle was exiled and where he experienced his apocalyptic visions written in the Book of Revelation. I reimagine PATMOS as a space of contemporary reckoning—not of salvation, but of awakening—questioning the illusory notion of saviors. It is a place where spells cast are broken, and from the binary, new revelations emerge.
Ryan Frigillana was born in Iligan City, Philippines, and immigrated with his family to Long Island, New York, where he continues to reside. His photographic work, in the form of artist’s books and installations, explores intergenerational themes of grief, myth, and spirituality through a diasporic and allegorical lens. Drawing from his religious and acculturated upbringing, he engages with popular media, family histories, and biblical material to contemplate photography as equal parts evidence, faith, and prayer. He currently works on projects between Long Island and Southaven, Mississippi.
Frigillana’s publications are held in the library collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Morgan Library and Museum, the Getty Research Institute, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston among others. He is a recipient of the Penumbra Foundation Risograph Print & Publication Residency (2021), the JGS Fellowship for Photography (2021, 2025), the En Foco Photography Fellowship (2023), the Aperture & Google Creator Labs Photo Fund (2023), the Penumbra Workspace Program (2024), and the NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in
Photography (2025).
Copyright © Ryan Frigillana, all rights reserved
