Luther Price (Born 1962 in Marlborough, MA; died 2020 in Revere, MA) was a Boston-based filmmaker and video artist who constructed pieces by using found footage drawn from a vast array of sources, including documentaries, pornography, and Hollywood features. His practice involved physically manipulating film, exposing the medium to extreme conditions by scratching, painting, and distressing the surface, or even burying it underground to collect dust, insects, and mold.
In Number 9, the artist produced four hundred slides projected by five carrousels in an evenly spaced row and simultaneously looped, an arrangement that connects his work with animation and early cinema. For each slide, Price combined recycled imagery with film he had shot himself and overlaid this visual imagery with hair, ink, and organic materials. He exposed the film to conditions which allowed for rot and the development of mold, aiming to distort and abstract the imagery. The individual slides vary vastly from silhouettes of monstrous insects to abstract patterns, from earthy tones to brilliant reds and oranges, resulting in a visually arresting experience. The artist has said about this work: “With Number 9, I feel I move to a visceral context very familiar to me in an autobiographical sense. I have a physical background in sculpture. So this work in particular is very 3-D.”