Paper #1

Although much of the discussion presented at the June AIB residency was filtered through an unfortunate haze of cold medicine and sinus pressure, I strove to glean as much useful information as I could from my talented fellow students and the ever so enlightening faculty. I arrived with the knowledge that the bulk of the work I was bringing from my first full semester in the MFA program was under the strict label of “experimentation;” with all but one exception, I saw this body of work as an exploration of medium and process, in the hopes that concept and meaning would cling to bits of it along the way like iron filings to a magnet. And though my thoughts were numbed by a corona of Benadryl, I was able to make sense of much of what was suggested to me during those ten days in Boston, to the point where I now feel I have a solid conceptual direction to move towards, and not just a technical one.

I was taken aback this residency by the sheer number of photographers in the newest pool of students. Further, I was somewhat pleased by the percentage of these newcomers who seemed to appreciate the qualities of traditional and alternative photographic techniques. There are some who believe that I am solidly opposed to digital imaging – not so; I simply believe in my heart that the act of capturing light onto a receptor and creating an image from it cannot be fully understood unless a person spends some amount of time working in a darkroom. Digital processing leaves the artist one step removed from the phenomenon of “fixing shadows.” I digress. The display room I was assigned to this residency was occupied by those artists who work primarily in photography – a drastic shift from my first residency, when I was with ceramicists, illustrators, and painters – and I found it quite helpful. Two newcomers, Elizabeth Schrenk and Lynda Schlosberg, were in my room, as well as fellow “Group 2-er” Jason Wallengren and two more from higher levels, Sarah Golden and Melissa Good. To critique with this group of students was wonderful, as they are all thoughtful people who were free with their suggestions, comments, and ideas.

One particular comment was common to nearly all of the critiques: the series of mannequin tintypes I presented seemed to be the most complete conceptually, and also proved to be the best “marriage” between subject and process. This is a conclusion that I fully agree with. Tintypes (also known as ferrotypes or melainotypes) were used almost exclusively for portraiture in the mid to late 19th century. In today’s light, many of these portraits have a rigid, inhuman quality to them due to the long exposure times and the need for the subject to pose very still for seconds, or minutes, at a time. Oliver Wasow, my former advisor, was reminded of The Twilight Zone when looking at my tintypes. He wondered if the mannequins were coming back to life; some, he said, look real already. In another critique, Julia Schaer and Michael Newman called the work a “perversion of portraiture” and suggested that I push the boundaries of the fetish qualities of the images, as well as my own comfort level, by giving the mannequins names and inventing entire background stories for them. While I am not sure whether this is necessary or an avenue I wish to pursue, I appreciated the opinion as it reinforced the belief I have that photography does not tell the “truth,” in contemporary photography nor in 19th century portraiture. Also discussed was the small 4”x5” size of the tintypes (more or less equal to traditional “half plate” tintype portraits of the 1800s), the kitsch quality of the images and concept, the inclusion of male mannequins and the possibility of photographing them in locations other than the antique barn (shopping malls, etc), and how they will ultimately be displayed in their final form (frames, sleeves, or lockets?). These are all questions I must tackle during this semester. Guest artist Annu Matthew provided me a critique on the morning following her interesting lecture. Her candid opinion and thoughtful insight were especially appreciated. She also found the tintypes the most compelling work that I presented, and further stressed the importance of a working marriage between process and subject.

As for the other works on display, I came in with the feeling that one process, the Polaroid emulsion lift, was leading me to a conceptual dead-end, and that the other process, liquid emulsion on glass, was at a beginning stage and not yet a fleshed-out body of work. These feelings were reinforced by the comments of others in my critiques. More than anything, the professors and fellow students commented more on the blue painter’s tape adhering the panes of glass together on the Polaroid lifts than the lifts themselves (this was a crucial lesson on the importance of proper display, however). While the lifts have an interesting look, the restriction of size, the preventive cost of Polaroid film, and the near impossibility for me to move the viewer past curiosity of process have pretty much convinced me to abandon this technique in terms of the fine art I will pursue in the grad program.

The images of the old hotel in the Catskills that I photographed with a Holga camera and printed with liquid emulsion on glass were found to be intriguing to many “critters” at the residency, but ultimately they found them to be lacking an element that allowed them to extract more meaning from the images. Part of the problem, proposed Oliver, was that the images have an inherent “flatness” to them – old buildings printed with an old-fashioned process – that prevent the artworks to carry an essential “edge,” as he put it. He connected it to an over-reliance on the notion of “nostalgia,” which he and some others believed was a dangerous and gloss-coated idea of the past that must be avoided. His suggestion was to begin photographing modern objects and architecture and printing these images with old processes, to examine the tension that is created. I intend to experiment with this during the second semester, though it is not necessarily a major direction I intend to travel towards. Ultimately, I believe that the liquid emulsion on glass process has strong potential, but the hurdle will be to make sure that I can use it in a way that the subject suits the medium. Part of what I am trying to accomplish during the beginning weeks of my second semester is to figure out how this can be done.

Concept: this is the word that will define the semester for me. I told many people at the residency that I am a “shoot first, ask questions later” kind of artist, but that was really an oversimplification. If anything I tend to over-think situations, both in my art and in daily life. Why this is not reflected more in much of the artwork I produce is unclear to me; perhaps I tend to look at art-making as more of an “escape” from these thoughts and intentionally try to steer clear. Perhaps I’m shy or slightly afraid of what people will think if my art becomes more personal. Whatever the reasons, I must begin to bare my thoughts this semester, both to myself and to others, so that the work I produce will follow suit and hopefully reach the depths of meaning that make them more than just “beautiful” and “interesting” images.

This will require a lot of writing at first, more so than the production of visual art. I need to organize my thoughts and share them with others. I will use my sketchbook, my blog, and restaurant napkins if necessary to jot down ideas and connections as they become clear to me. Right now the concentration of thoughts is being channeled to two bodies of work I wish to explore, and possibly which may become my final thesis. One is the series of mannequin tintypes. This series seems ripe with the themes of reality, memory, history, death, and truth in photography. The other body of work is at the moment but a spark in my mind, and I won’t know exactly what will come of it until I make a trip to Gettysburg, PA, the town I frequented as a child, this fall. The ideas I have for this work would fill up more than a three-page report on its own, but basically it deals with histories: my personal history, photographic history, and a history of war. I expect that I will use, in part, photographic emulsion on glass for this series.

Books Suggested to Me:
· Geoffrey Batchen, Forget Me Not
· Nicholas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics
· Lawrence Weschler, Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees
· Lawrence Weschler, Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonders
· Jerry L. Thompson, Truth and Photography: Notes on Looking and Photographing
· Andy Grundberg, Crisis of the Real
· Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others

Artists Suggested to Me:
· Troy Brauntch
· Wallace Nutting
· Gordon Matta Clark
· Rosamond Purcell
· Adam Fuss
· Binh Danh
· Deborah Luster
· Jerry Spagnoli
· Eugene Atget
· Henry Darger
· Hans Bellmer
· Joseph Sudek
· Aiken & Ludwig
· Joan Fontcuberta
· Mark Dion
· Mark Ostermann
· Ilya Kabokov