Discussions Concerning Contemporary Photographic Art

SRO is pleased to be back for the 2011-2012 school year. To start this year off, we have an interview with our current showing artist, David Schalliol.  Be sure to check out our Exhibits Schedule for artist information and upcoming exhibit dates. Keep checking the blog for more interviews, highlights, events, and general information!

A Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago and the Visiting Assistant Professor of Social Sciences at the Illinois Institute of Technology, David Schalliol’s interests span urban sociology, social stratification, visual sociology, culture and the sociology of education. He is currently focusing on the role of inequality in the construction of the built environment through his project, Isolated Building Studies.

Explain your feelings about Chicago. Tell us how this may differ from the South and West side of Chicago and why are you interested in continuing to work in such dilapidated parts of the city?

 I’ve happily been in Chicago for nine years. I’m finishing my PhD at the University of Chicago and have been teaching as a visiting assistant professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology for about four years. I grew up just outside of Indianapolis, and living in the Midwest was probably a factor in where I selected a graduate program. However, I was looking for a program that emphasizes interdisciplinary study as well as a focus on urban issues, and the University of Chicago’s Department of Sociology has a strong tradition in both fields – it was a logical choice to sort of settle there. Chicago has stayed true to its urban connection as one of the birthplaces of American sociology.

Personally, for me it’s a great city. It’s become my adopted home; it’s a vibrant city, it’s negotiable – it’s easy to get around in. That said, socioeconomically it may be a different story. One of Chicago’s big downsides is that it’s one of the most segregated cities in the United States on most any demographic you want to focus on. So, if you look at the South and the West sides compared to the North side of town (not to say places outside the South and West sides do not have their areas of concentrated disadvantage) the vast majority of said disadvantage is on those sides.

I live in Hyde Park and, thanks to the university, the area has survived as a stable community in an economic sense over the period despite the relative collapse of surrounding communities. It’s the traditional northern story of what happened to those areas: industrialization, red lining, all sorts of other kinds of racial issues and the problems that plague most cities in the northeast and Midwest with industrial heritages – Chicago has those same issues. As those jobs left the city and as racial tensions developed in the way they did, what we saw were basically white people fleeing most of the communities on the South and West sides. Additionally, federal programs, for instance, the way that they chose to put housing projects in concentrated areas that were already economically disadvantaged, fed into those existing dynamics on the South and West sides of the city.

I’ve always been interested in the dynamics of inequality. I’ve had personal experiences that have connected me in one way or another to the issues, whether it be when I was in high school I spent a lot of time in sort of a neighborhood dissimilar from my suburban life – and that was an early, powerful experience. More than that, I’ve always had an interest in bigger social issues and the policy arena that deals with those issues; and I’ve always wanted to do work that would in some way speak to those in some way – perhaps by raising awareness and then either through or in addition to working on solutions to the dynamics of inequality.

In interviews in the past you’ve mentioned your desire for your photos to have political or community-changing impact; what is it you would ultimately like to see come of your photos? How do you feel toward the progress that has been made in your communities of focus?

At this point I’m doing work that’s more documentary than advocacy oriented, but there are ways that documentary work in a way becomes advocacy work. The way I see my role at this point is investigating the relationships at play in Chicago and that can lay foundation for other kinds of policy solutions. I’m not looking to get into politics, per se, but I’m young. In an immediate sense I’d like there to be attention drawn to these issues even if it’s helping to reinsert a narrative about the complications of investment and divestment on the South and West sides of the city. I see that as being advantageous. I think that in the long run, if I were to think what my ultimate goals were, I’d say true community redevelopment in which all parties are satisfied. Often what we see in redevelopment scenarios are those who previously lived in the community don’t have the opportunity to return, and that’s problematic. As neighborhoods’ economic fortunes change I think there’s a way to structure that so that those who are already there can stay and enjoy the fruits of a revitalized community.

I do not think photographs alone are doing this, but that’s why I say we have this idea of opening up a discourse regarding these issues. I felt like being on the South side that I had this really great opportunity to go out and photograph areas that other people weren’t. And it’s just a basic reminder that this should be part of the landscape in a way that’s not simply reading about, for example, wherever the shootings were last night or where the feature piece about an organization doing something good in a bad part of the city was located. Instead, I’m hoping to bring some mundane aspect of the communities into the public eye by showing what housing looks like, what churches in these areas look like. Showing those daily aspects of life could fill in some public info of what’s going on in these areas. It was a personal motivation to make sure that material was up there.

When I first began taking photos in Chicago it was right at the beginning of the housing bubble. What we were seeing was a lot of demolition and speculative development occurring; the speculation possibly looking for public funds with programs designed to pay private market rents for people who qualified for subsidized housing without public housing. So you might build a development like that, but there was a lot of other construction occurring at the housing margins. And part of my interest was photographing what was there because so much of it was getting demolished really rapidly. We were losing beautiful 1880’s buildings and other important, at least formally important community buildings. I wanted to document some of these things before they became eradicated.

As housing market peaked and collapsed, it’s become a different story where foreclosure is more prevalent alongside bank ownership. There are more and more of these open and derelict buildings, so it’s been awful to watch the ebb and flow of the market take its physical toll, of course in turn having a tremendous social impact on the community. People are paying attention to these photos and as this issue has become more well known; other people have stepped up and started taking photos, writing articles, things like that.

What research was done in determining which buildings to photograph for the Isolated Building Studies? When did you decide this would become a project of focus? What inspiration was drawn from your other photography projects or educational past?

It’s a funny project in the sense that it started out as exploration. One of the reasons I love photography and sociology is for getting to know places. So what I’d do, I’d drive around the city, bike around whatever, and just look to find places I hadn’t been before. Once you drive around long enough, patterns start to appear, and this is just one of those things that popped out to me. I started taking a few photographs of the isolated buildings, and I thought it was kind of interesting.

I started getting positive feedback about the project from photo communities, and so I started thinking about it more. I started thinking about what I could be able to do with photographic project that I was hoping could move beyond the typical evidence-based approach that maybe one might take in a traditional sociological study or where one uses photos as evidence of something to be able to approach this as a documentary project, but to also think of it as something that could be different from that. Ideally, I wanted to engage a concept of a visual argument answering how I could structure images as objects in relationship to each other or to raise awareness of issues in a viewer as they engage the project. It was really an experiment to see where I could go with that, and I started teasing out other sub themes, thinking about representing movement- transportation, things like that. In a good number of images you’ll find a good number of elevated rail lines in the background or old freight lines as a way to symbolize or bring other aspects of the community into the image without directly brining people into the image.

How many buildings have you photographed altogether?

Right now I have 575 buildings I photographed, isolated buildings. It’s a lot of buildings, but it’s not a ubiquitous phenomenon, but certainly there are elements of it in which most cities have faced. Philadelphia, for instances, started out looking really different but ended up with some of the same similar manifestations. The physical characteristics of the cities all make them unique and the experience of this unique, but in Chicago, it has its own character and I think that it is a surprising number of buildings, but surely there are thousands of them.

What are these buildings that you’ve found?

I haven’t looked at specific places of buildings’ location, but I have checked the construction dates on a few. I’m advantaged a little when I say I know the history of the city and history of these buildings.  I know a little about the buildings simply based on the neighborhood and what I know about its place in the city. Some of the history has been helpful. I see correlation with my other projects. On one hand, Isolated Building Studies, while it’s about history and resilience along with decline, it really emphasizes the building that’s standing there as the thing that remains; my other projects are sort of taking what’s on the side. It’s looking at the building that didn’t survive and what’s happening in their place – or, in the few buildings that have survived, looking at what people are sort of reclaiming.

How have community leaders perceived your work once you have shared your photos with the public?

I’m not at the point where I’m presenting this material to leaders. I’m certainly involved, but probably the main way officials in the capacity of local government would make a connection with my work would be in relationship to historical preservation efforts. I work with a number of not-for-profit organizations in the city who do work brining attention to environments as preservation.

I may document buildings, and those become included in a contemporary documentation of the quality of buildings in communities. It might be a historic building survey of a community; it might be going out and visiting specific buildings and looking at what is particularly noteworthy for social reasons or for physical attributes. In that way, people in specific, I suppose bureaucratic, elected positions, would be interfacing with the work in that way.

There is other research I’ve been involved with that will ultimately directly engage policy makers, and it’s work that builds off of photography, but it’s different work that will be discussed. Other projects may be related to policy makers, although we’ll be presenting it in academic journals rather than directly to policy makers, but it will inform the policy debate about the frameworks that are utilizing theories of social reform.

Perhaps it is safe to say many do not regularly venture into the communities you photograph outside of their residents; how have citizens in the different parts of the communities reacted to your presence and work?

 People do not usually visit the South and West sides specifically. One of the things that pushed me to do more work on the South and West sides, other than simply living where I do, was that when I would look at photos of city of Chicago online, they were dominated by photos of what was going on on the North side and Hyde Park and very few other neighborhoods, instead of what’s really going on in the whole city.

The city has done a good job of highlighting specific attractions in communities all over the city, but there’s always a little bit of a backlash to that. Every once in a while you’ll see something on the city’s website about something in a neighborhood with a public commenter warning visitors not to go, but chances are things are going to be fine. People don’t go to those places, they don’t know what the place is like and I think that prejudice continues to be pervasive.

I’m always aware of my outsider status, most of the communities I stand out in as a Caucasian guy pulling up in a Volvo, and I stick out; there’s no doubt about it. Clearly I’m an outsider when I’ve got my camera and my tri-pod and I’m not used to being seen on their block. I try to talk to people, and usually I have very positive conversations with people, and I tell them what’s going on, what my interests are and what I am doing; people are pretty receptive. Not to say there hasn’t been problems, but secondarily there is the question as to who I am. I may be well received, but I may not be great for someone if they think I’m doing investigative work and so I think there are reasons for someone to be wary of me. I understand their concerns, and I would be equally suspicious in their shoes. To see some guy taking a photograph of a building on my block would make me wonder what was going on. I don’t think it’s unusual to be a concerned citizen, so I try to be really straightforward with what I’m doing. I don’t hide what’s going on or try to be quick to avoid detection. I try to be deliberate, purposeful and open with what I’m doing because I think it demonstrates I’m not trying to pull someone over on someone- that’s not my intention at all. I’ve had times people have asked me not to photograph something, and I haven’t. I’m not sure why they don’t want me to take the pictures; they could be concerns about my possible bad intent and again, I understand that. While it’s fully within my legal rights to stand on the street and take a photograph of something, but it doesn’t mean I have to. It doesn’t mean that I’m going to stop working in these communities, but I think it doesn’t mean I need a good reason to be doing that, that I’m not intentionally brazen in the face of them.

Where is ”Isolated Buildings” headed in the future? Do you have plans for other projects? 

I’m still actively involved in the project. Working on other projects has slowed down my focus on this one, but I’m still working on it and go out occasionally when I’m not traveling to shoot – and there are a couple buildings I like to photograph at different times. I’m just continuing the build the project. I’ve got other things going on, and I’m not looking to take Isolated Buildings beyond Chicago. I think of that project as being about Chicago-land, about a study of a place. When I’m out other places I do take photographs of buildings that are in similar situations – I’m sure there are places even in Lubbock like Chicago that have been demolished or lots not built on yet – but it seems different than the work I’ve already done in Chicago. Elsewhere, to me, it’s a totally different project. Similar issues, but different cities, so I’ve just honed in on the Chicago aspect of the project there. At some point I may connect some dots with my other projects, but it’s all still in the works.

The SRO Photo Gallery opens the first exhibition of the 2011/2012 exhibits season -  David Schalliol:  Isolated Building Studies – Revealing Meaning through Recontextualization – on Friday,  September 2nd.  Come by the School of Art at Texas Tech and meet featured artist David Schalliol during a reception from 5-7 p.m.

Two other exhibitions will be opening that evening at the School of Art also, the Annual Art Faculty Exhibition and the Annual MFA Candidate Group Show.

Lori Hepner was interviewed on April 25 by e-mail as her exhibit opened on April 11. Her show is up until May 8, 2011. She is our final featured artist for the semester, but be sure to check out our SRO Photo Gallery Artists for 2011-2012.

Lori Hepner, SRO Artist 2010-2011

What inspired you for the concept of this project?

I’ve long been interested in digital technology, both as a means to make artwork and as a way to look at culture, for a number of years.  This work, Status Symbols, was started in a flash of inspiration that hit while learning to solder together electronics for the first time at a local workshop.  The concept was close to being fully formed at the outset, at least in terms of what the aesthetics would be.  I was interested in the layering of light that would wash together through long-exposures of moving LEDs.  I also knew that color negative film would be the best medium to use, as I wanted to use the build up of color density in the highlights, rather than maxing out with pure digital white: 255, 255, 255.  Since I had been using binary code as both a technique and concept in previous bodies of work, the idea to turn letters of text from tweets into a string of ones and zeros happened pretty naturally.  The ons and offs of LEDs would be the actual text the tweet, character by character.

In lay-person’s terms, explain how the process of the LED Ardunio system works. How was this software applied to your project? How are the images captured and converted into photographs?

The Arduino is an open source microcontroller, basically a mini-computer, that can easily be programmed to control physical items, such as motors, LEDs, light sensors, touch sensors, etc, that an artist might want to be a part of a sculpture, installation, or photo set-up.  It is designed to be affordable, as even fully constructed Arduinos are less than $50, and are cross platform for Macs, Windows, and Linux users.  A good introduction to the technology can be found on the Arduino website for those that might want more details (http://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/Introduction).

In my particular use of the Arduino for the Status Symbols project, an array of 8 RGB LEDs, each similar to one pixel on a computer screen, are controlled to turn on and off by the Arduino software.  The customizable program allows the color of light to be changed based upon the intensity of the red, green, and blue channels in the LEDs.  It sets the speed of the on and off blinking, and controls the sequence of blinks to line up with the binary code that makes up each alphanumeric character of a tweet.  By using ASCII binary code, each alphanumeric letter of the keyboard is turned into a series of 8 ones and zeros that are transmitted to the LEDs very quickly.  An entire 140-character tweet can blink by in a few seconds.

My set-up has the 8 LEDs and Arduino spinning below a Hassleblad camera that is loaded with color negative film.  Each individual twitter portrait is turned into a computer program that controls the 8 LEDs.  The LED-array is set to spin and long exposures capture the moving blinks of the LEDs, sometimes through diffusion material, and form the basis of each portrait on the film.  After processing, each frame is scanned into the computer and turned into a printable image file.

What are some patterns you may have noticed in the words from status updates and Tweets once converted into the images of light seen in the products the Ardunio elicits?

One of the most unexpected patterns that I’ve noticed in the work is when tweets have recurring characters.  In the work that I did for the Brooklyn Museum’s, now-defunct, @1stfan project, I was asking followers to tweet back their portrait in text.  The first reply was @1stfans rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr… until all 140 characters of the tweet were used.  Since the tweet was 8 differing characters from the @1stfan reply, followed by a repeated character, an interesting donut shape emerged.  Others mimicked this technique during the month-long project, specifically one of my friends, @npghjunk,who told me that he liked the visual formed by the first tweet.  He then responded by using a series of periods following the text of his portrait.

How do #trendingtopics from Twitter or heavily discussed events on other social media sites affect your work? Explain the selection process for words or phrases to be converted into light-image form.

The one trending topic that I made some images from was the #iranelection.  I was interested in capturing the large amount of messages, but was unable to attain more than 1000 tweets at a time due to an API search limit imposed by Twitter.  The tweets that I was able to save only scratched the surface of the hundreds of thousands of tweets of the hashtag.  I shot a great deal of the first few minutes of the #iranelection but I haven’t shown any of these images.  I may go back to the images at some point in the future to create a body of portraits, but haven’t felt that the timing is right to exhibit these.  Since it is far past the immediacy of the original hashtag, the work would need to be viewed at a time with more cultural relevancy than there is right now.  It’s a battle between the quickness of Twitter and the slowness that comes up with planning physical exhibitions.

You mentioned in an interview with the Brooklyn Museum that you “tweak” the code to create different aesthetic experiences; how are you working to preserve specific contents carried by the words, such as intellectual, emotional or other?

The tweaking refers to the colors that I’ve added in to the code for the portraits for certain tweet characteristics from the work from that project: Hashtags # are red.  @ Symbols are orange.  “Quotes” are purple.  Some strategic words are blue.

Otherwise, the words in each tweet are a randomly generated color that the code generates at the beginning of a word.  Random colors are generated for each of the R, G, and B channels and the color stays valid until a space signifies a new word, when a new set of color values are generated by the program.

How would you like audiences to view your “digital portraits?”

I consider the work to be portraits of the individuals/organizations at the moment of their tweet.  Each tweet is a new representation, whether made into an artwork, or left un-imaged. Each status update is a momentary portrait.

In which way do you really see the images as abstract or has the series been considered abstract because audiences may not fully understand what they are seeing?

The work was purposely constructed to be abstract on multiple levels.  It is first a direct abstraction of the tweet as it changes text into code into light.  It is also visibly abstract in the formal qualities that emerge in the produced image; It is unlike most abstract photographs as it does not visualize a part of the everyday world, but uses the defining properties of photography to create images that cannot be made through any other route.

To what extent is the round image a byproduct of the microcontroller and to what extent are you free to choose the shape of the image output?

I chose to make the portraits circular from the outset.  I have a few experiments going on that involve other forms, but I haven’t shown these outside of my studio.

What image sticks out in your mind? What was the word behind its creation?

A piece that stands out is, @justinrmeyer, 12:41 PM Dec 21st from web (#2), @1stfans gaugcuacugcuaug. This tweet is from a personal friend who is a biologist.  He tweeted a string of  DNA base pairs as his portrait: gaugcuacugcuau. The code within the code comes through in the image, which visually reminds me the nuclear fallout symbol.

Many thanks to Lori for answering our questions. Thank you for a great season.

Bill McCullough was interviewed March 7 at the Texas Tech School of Art SRO Photo Gallery during his visit to Lubbock and the University. A lively interview, McCullough gave honest and candid answers as well as spirited motions in his commentary. McCullough is passionate about his work as a photographer and only has plans to further his wedding/photography portfolio.

Bill McCullough, SRO Artist 2010-2011

How did you get into photography? And more specifically how did you end up becoming a wedding photographer?

As a young kid, I was always fascinated with magic, science, and gadgets. After watching a show called “James at 16”, I became interested in photography.  I was intrigued by his use of a 35mm camera that was very different than my mom’s instamatic;and, he developed his own photographs in his darkroom.  I saved and bought my first camera at 15 years old. I was fascinated with the camera’s ability to stop water in mid stream. I found the science of photography interesting.

A year later, I saw a few black and white prints that were done by my best friend’s father, Will Lowrimore.  He was a master of the zone system and printed everything himself in his darkroom. Seeing for the first time the power of a perfectly printed photograph, I was inspired to focus on the technique of photography. In high school I talked my parents into letting me build a darkroom above the garage with some money I saved as a waiter.

There was a culmination of several factors that led me into wedding photography. In 2002, I married my wife who is an artist and printmaker. This pivotal change in my life created an environment with an emphasis on more creative endeavors.  Together, we strove to come up with a way to make a living without compromising our intent to create something we were proud of. Wedding photography, full of preconceptions and an overly sentimental tone, begged for a fresh approach, an approach that would allow me to maintain my personal point of view while still making a living. After photographing a few friends weddings, I soon discovered that the wedding provided a framework that allowed me to capture aspects of modern social life that interested me. I never paid any attention to other wedding photography and still don’t. This has helped my own style develop quickly.  I bought a couple of $35 film cameras off ebay, borrowed a friend’s flash, and shot my first professional wedding.

In an interview with Glasstire.com, you mentioned that “decisive moments,” in your photography come from your patience and optimism; how do you get yourself in the position of capturing these images, some of which strike me as incredibly surreal, at the weddings?

A lot of practice and concentration.

You can develop an intuition about where to stand and when to click the shutter, but this only comes from the act of doing. Also, because I understand  what I want to show in a photograph, a strong editing practice, which is an art form in itself, is the final step in bringing the best images forward.

In a fantastic essay on photography, Charles Harbutt mentions “How many photographic balIs was the photographer able to juggle at once?” Balancing several elements at once during an ephemeral moment to create a memorable photograph is exactly what I am trying to accomplish. When all the balls (physical positioning, light, mystery, focus, characters, emotion, ambiguity) are suspended in mid air then I have the photograph I am looking for. I hope there is a feeling that the image can never be recreated again.

You use lighting to great effect; what qualities do you look for in a final product you select to present? List some of the criteria you use to select the photographs you present as final products to your clients. When I see your photos, I am intrigued by the stories each seems to suggest; what types of reactions are you seeking to achieve out of the viewer?

I first used flash for technical reasons… to stop action in dark places and present photographs that are sharp and in focus. Since then, I have used light as an element that enhances the performance and theatrical aspects of social situations. Nothing in my work is posed, but the use of artificial light can create a sense of wonder and raise questions for the viewer. I want to ride the edge of presenting photographs about real life  that could never be staged, but also evoke a cinematic mood. Photography is about light, but my additional lighting does not make or break the photograph. Many times I use only the light that is available to me.

Another reason for using extra light is to create multiple layers of elements at various distances from the lens. This depth helps me emphasize the magic that happens when something is transformed from three dimensions into just two. This layering and collage effect places importance on all elements in the frame.

My wife and I edit photographs together. Composition, technique, and mood are the basic criterion we use to present a solid, well edited selection of photographs that the client will see. With further editing that usually occurs over time, we choose favorites that we believe to be special. When I say special, I mean that the photograph contains a hidden depth.

I strive to draw in the viewer, entertain, and give them just enough information to spark their own imagination about what the image is about.

If you are married, who took your wedding photographs? If you are not married yet, but think you might someday be, what sort of wedding photos would you want? For you?

It’s hard to believe I have been married for nine years. My wife had the idea to hire a courtroom sketch artist to document our wedding. She and I share our studio together and see eye to eye on many things.  I love her very much.

Many thanks to Bill for answering our questions.