Roe Ethridge – In the Beginning

Loose Joints presents In the Beginning, a three-volume set reuniting Roe Ethridge’s three formative, self-published books – County Line, Orange Grove and Spare Bedroom – originally released in 2004–05 and long out of print. Across these early volumes, Ethridge stages a sharp, playful inquiry into the American everyday. From rotting Florida citrus orchards to half-built suburban interiors and the static hum of strip-mall signage, each book turns on a clear typological register, where the familiar slides easily into the strange. Ethridge sets his pictures in a dialogue with photographic archetypes – catalogues, calendars, studio models, kitsch displays – using them to probe how images shape, naturalise and sometimes fracture American life. Reissued twenty years later, In the Beginning reads as a prefiguration of the more than fifteen books and catalogues that would follow. It marks the opening chapter of an artist who would go on to become one of contemporary photography’s most influential practitioners – revealing the restless, incisive eye that shaped everything to come.