David Hartt creates primarily photo-based works that often appear in installations. He says his works “serve as intimate portraits of dreams and ideals that have not failed as much as been subtly displaced or altered.” His recent project, Stray Light (2011), includes a video and photographs taken at the Johnson Publishing Company in Chicago, producer of Ebony and Jet magazines and the leading arbiter of African American taste during the latter half of the twentieth century. Hartt records the original 1971 interiors, and the images serve as documents of African American cultural history.