A Transient Rumination

Back in May of this year, Dean Brierly, a freelance writer for B&W Magazine, as well as a number of other magazines through the years, interviewed me for his blog. You can find the full interview here. Enjoy.

From an academic perspective I’ve always thought that dissecting color, even organizing it in wheels only goes so far. Fundamentally, color is an emotional response-you do indeed have to feel it-it is primal, and visceral. It can make you shudder in horror, or it can make you giddy as a school girl in June, but we all need to realize that our response to color is fundamentally emotional. The way that a photographer uses color is as manipulative as it can get in our medium. Our interpretation of color is rooted in our psyche’s is therefore hard to control-it is a response on a primal level, and we are hard pressed to actually control our response to specific colors. Just consciously realizing these things changes how we choose to use color in our photography and changes how we control our color palettes in post production.

Without a doubt, color is important-but for me the question has always been how much color needs to be in a photograph to make the image more evocative? Does it need to yell at the rafters that IT has arrived? Or can it be the smallest whisper, tickling that quiet place in the back of your mind? For me, color has never been about bold graphic statements or striking color fields, it’s been much more emotionally potent for me if color was used as a quiet wash throughout the image, a mellowing ingredient rather than an amplifying one. Much of my work has been described as black and white, because the color palettes are sometimes so subtle as to be misinterpreted as simply toned gelatin silver. Indeed some of my work is simply toned, but for me the quietness of a muted palette is surpassed by nothing at all-it is the best of both worlds. I don’t need color to fight for dominance in my own work because my work is not about color, it is about something intangible and introspective-therefore to me, color provides a connection to a certain mental state that the graphic and narrative qualities in my work support. Nothing more, nothing less.

I’ve updated my site with some images that never made it into the final body of work for the Transience of Self series. I call it Periphery mainly because they always were on the edge of the main body of work and additionally because these were mostly exterior images created while I was trying to find my way back to the foundation of why I do what I do. They were necessary for bringing my work to the place it is now. 

My Spotlight was just published and should be in stores now. I’m pretty stoked. It’s a four page deal with 1 page interview and 3 page portfolio. It starts on page 98!

All visual artists need words. The word, whether written or spoken is the conduit that brings understanding in a deeper, more conscious way. We put photographs on the crit rail and what do we do? We talk about them. Occasionally we write about our work, in stumbling, jumbled prose we attempt to convey to others what our work means to us. Shouldn’t it be enough to let the photograph speak for itself? Do we not believe that our work has a voice of it’s own without adding ‘traditional’ language to the mix? I cannot deny that words do indeed help us clarify our own intention, but I still wonder why the photograph isn’t enough. Part of me wants to believe that there is work out there that does not require words to validate it’s existence. Some may point out the work of the great masters-that those works stand on their own, but our understanding of these works come from what has been written by others, so the question remains; is there intrinsic power inside a photograph that can negate the need for words?

Here is some work that was in the 2008 Spring Show at the Academy of Art University.

I’ve been busy spreading around my most recent work. Here is a breakdown of the work that will be either in galleries or publications. 

• The Art In Nature Exhibition at the Center for Fine Art Photography
• Award: Directors Selection
• Juror: George Lepp

• Issue 67 of BW Magazine: 4 page portfolio with 1 page bio
• Award: Spotlight Winner

• Idea of Self Exhibition at the Center for Fine Art Photography
• Juror: Susan A Zadeh, editor in chief and artistic director of Eyemazing magazine

• Artists Showcase Portfolio, Second Edition. Published in March 2009. 12 image portfolio.
• Juror: Rixon Reed, founder of Photo-eye

I’m working on producing a substantial body of work in the palladium process as well that I intend to show in a regional gallery. We’ll see how it progresses over the next few months. Overall I’m stoked about the direction and recognition that has come my way after all these long years of working. 

The set of tools that photographer’s use today is rapidly removing the limitations that have traditionally molded the visual possibilities within the medium. What does this expansion of possibilities and the ease at which these variations can be realized do to the process of making images? I wonder why I see so many artists impose upon themselves limitations, whether conscious or unconscious, by choosing materials with defined boundaries. Why have so many people chosen a specific type of paint to work in? Why are there photographers putting the brakes on so to speak and saying “I just want to make pictures” not shoot video, not work on 3D models in Photoshop CS4? When did Photoshop become about 3D wire meshes and editing video? And of course where does the decisive moment fit when your camera can shoot 30 fps in HD-any of which are suitable for publication in many newspapers and websites around the world? Where does the still image fit into this ever changing set of photographic tools?

Photography is unique in the visual arts. It requires physicality to function. It requires a presence, a thing, an object, a place. It requires a noun in order to become what it is. No other art requires anything except the mind of the artist. A photographic image cannot be made from memory. A painting can. A sculpture can. A photograph cannot. What does this mean to me as a photographic artist? Does it even matter?

The link to reality that photography needs in order to fulfill it’s function has been a stumbling block from it’s invention in 1839. At first people only wanted to record facts, places, and things. Fast forward 169 years and it seems that many of us are more interested in photographing from memory. I’m more interested in communicating what is in my head than what my eyes see. It seems to go against the very nature of the medium I have chosen to communicate through. Can it be done? What are the images going to look like? Where will they come from and how will they be made? Does technology get in the way of this desire to photograph from memory? Project our thoughts another 100 years into the future and where does photography find itself?