SRO is pleased to be back for the 2010-2011 school year. To start this year off, we have an interview with our current showing artist, Tony Chirinos. His show is up until September 19, 2009. 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!

Nelson Mandela, 16 x 20", silver gelatin print, 2009

Tony Chirinos is Assistant Professor of Photography at Miami Dade College Kendall Campus, Miami, FL.  He holds an MFA from Columbia University, New York, NY, and exhibits nationally. Tony Chirinos’ series, Fighting Cocks, explores the culture of cock fighting and its spectators. We are delighted to be showing his work and recently asked Tony a few questions:

In your series, Fighting Cocks, the subjects of your images, the people as well as the roosters, evoke a sense of pride within Colombia’s bird fighting subculture. Can you go into more detail about the people, roosters, and families that participate in bird fighting and how bird fighting is integrated into their lives?

These photographs were made on a very small island, San Andres, Colombia, which is situated about 60 miles off the coast of Nicaragua. The people of San Andres are mostly of slave decent, brought to the island by Dutch and English countries. The language is bilingual Spanish-English but most islanders prefer to use the English language. The people and families that participate in cock fighting have been doing it for many generations, learning the trade from their fathers, grandparents and/or other family members. Everyone that I have met takes so much pride in what they do; from the type of feed created for the roosters, to the way they train their birds. It reminds me of Japanese Samurais, the beauty of their kimono, their precise training and their mental focus.

In your artist’s statement, you express appreciation for the bird fighting in Colombia. What is the difference you see in Colombian’s subculture of bird fighting and the negative connotations with bird fighting in the United States, in light of the fact that bird fighting is illegal in the United States?

The negative connotation is that everyone thinks that in every fight, one of the birds dies. That’s not the case. Yes, there is death in some of the fights, but in San Andres, the fight is for fifteen minutes with two referees in the ring. Sometimes the fight is ruled a draw or there is a winner without a death. Look, we allow grown man to beat each other until usually one of the two becomes unconscious. The medical industry has proven that many years of trauma to the head leads to atrophy to the brain. We allow boxing and Mix Martial Arts to happen for the enjoyment and entertainment of the people. As for other animals, it’s hypocritical to allow horse racing and not fighting roosters. The difference is that one is for the enjoyment of the upper class and the other is for the enjoyment of mostly poor people. In both events there is gambling.

How did you become aware of bird fighting and what intrigued you to create this series?

My father made me aware of the Cock fighting culture. He was born in Cuba, migrated to Venezuela, and finally situated in Miami. At a very young age I would hear my dad tell stories about his childhood in Cuba. He would tell all sorts of stories from riding horses to working in a sugar cane plantation. All the stories were very interesting, but the one that intrigued me the most was the story of my dad participating in Cock fighting. I was so intrigued by his story, that I too, wanted to participate. Living in Miami, Florida, I could have never participated in the culture of Cock fighting because of it being an illegal practice. Finally, as an adult I had the opportunity to see first hand what this culture of cock fighting was all about. I was able to visit San Andres about twice a year and became a spectator for two years before I decided to create a project about Cock fighting. I wanted to know everything about this culture and what motivated the owners in producing the perfect fighter. As a documentary style photographer, I try very hard to impose questions to the viewer about the project rather than spelling out the answers to what they are seeing. Some of the questions that I have in mind are: why is the practice of Cock fighting associated with the Hispanic culture? How can I respect this practice the same way that horse racing is respected?

Coño, 16 x 20", silver gelatin print, 2009

In your artist statement you state, “You see a rooster who embodies personality and reveals a stage which references the world that surrounds it”. Can you go into more detail about how cock fighting works as a metaphor for the culture that surrounds it?

Very simple, the majority of the participants are men with big egos. My observation is that cock fighting is an extension to the male phallus. There are lots of Alpha males, all after the big prize. In the real world they are after women, cars and jobs. In the cock ring they are after the top cock, money and prestige.

In which ways has working on this series affected the way you teach your photography classes?

Helping students to learn what is unique about photography, what makes a successful photograph so satisfying to look at, and being in the presence of people just like myself struggling to express themselves with the medium, has been enormously rewarding. I have grown and matured as an artist while teaching photography. My photos inform my teaching in direct and concrete ways: I constantly find myself bringing up in class the very issues that I deal with in my own artwork. Yet, I am aware that my teaching informs my photographic practice in unpredictable ways, as well. I strain to be clear in class, as it is important for me to articulate the ideas and concerns of a photographic project that are vital to artistic practice.  As a result, I return to my own photography regenerated, enthusiastic and passionate, with a renewed justification of life.

Many thanks to Tony for answering our questions. Be sure to stop by and view the exhibit until September 19, 2010.

The Man of the Crowd, detail

Elizabeth Tonnard is a Dutch artist working both in the Netherlands and the US. Her exhibition of her unbound book, The Man of the Crowd, is currently showing in the SRO Photo Gallery until April 17, 2010. We are delighted to be showing this work and recently asked Elisabeth a few questions:

“The Man of the Crowd” is an unbound book displayed on hand-made paper shelves. How do you choose what book form to use for each project and what does choosing to work with the book offer you that other forms of production do not? And beyond that, how do you choose between making a more conventionally bound book and unbound one, such as the one we have on display?

What attracts me visually is not so much the unique, but repetitions with small variations. The physical form of the book is itself set up as a repetitious event, with its pages similar but different. The great thing about it is that you can move the pages and experience the variations within the repetition. Chris Burnett, who has written about several of my works, has recently called my books “bioscopic”. Flipping through the pages you get a sense of a twitching or stuttering of variations that have a similarity but are different. In my codex books I also use the spread as a combination of one (the one spread) and two (the two pages). For instance, Contemplation uses found portraits of one and the same man that are folded in such a way that he is looking at himself (from one page to the next in the spread) throughout the book. In this way the still of the portraits is set into motion by the structure of the book. In Two of Us the text of a Baudelaire poem is broken apart into separate words, set, and rotated progressively at an angle on each page. Flipping the pages causes the words to pirouette as the poem reads sequentially from front-to-back on the recto and, on the verso, from back-to-front. This whole procedure also causes accidental word combinations to appear on the level of the spread. So the conventionally bound book is a fantastic mechanism for both sequential movement and juxtaposition.

The Man of the Crowd was made to be exhibited on shelves, so that the sense of a horizontal street could be evoked (images of a street play a big role in the project). The viewer walks past the work, which makes sense because it is all about flânerie and the act of looking in the streets. I also love to use the natural white of the page in books. I’ve created several books based on a whiteout procedure, in which the white of the page becomes part of the image. In The Man of the Crowd there is a text section too in which Edgar Allen Poe’s story is processed so that his 100 most frequently used words are written in white while the rest of the text is still legible – this evokes the image of a crowded street but also the sense of things that are left unknown, invisible to the eye.

The Man of the Crowd, displayed unbound book pages

“The Man of the Crowd” is based upon a short story by Edgar Allen Poe. How do you choose texts by others to work with, and how important are such materials to your work?

When I see something I will often see it in the light of a literary event. What happened in the case of this specific project was that I was in Paris and sitting at a sidewalk café when I saw this very old man pass me by. He was in between alone and not alone; in between real and unreal. He was wearing the oddest jacket in the oddest shade of blue. He had something ghostlike about him and I was reminded of Poe’s The Man of the Crowd, in which the observer is also sitting in a bar when he sees an old man with a remarkable appearance pass by. I felt the only difference was that Poe’s observer was in London and I was in Paris. It was the same man of the crowd, come back to the streets of the 21^st century. Anyways I immediately started photographing the man and the street, till the old man had passed out of sight. So I can’t really say I “chose” a text; it just materialized in front of me.

Another example maybe. When I was looking through a huge archive of street vendor photography I noticed that in a section of photos taken at night, there was a larger percentage of people walking alone in the streets than in the daytime sections. These people also had a certain look on their faces as if their eyes were seeing something else than their actual surroundings. This alienation made me think of them as souls lost in the dark woods of the city, all speaking the words of Dante’s first lines in the Inferno. So I made In this Dark Wood, pairing images of people walking alone in nighttime city streets with 90 different English translations I collected of the first lines of Dante’sInferno. The layout of the book stresses repetition and interchangeability. The images are re-expressions of each other, and so are the texts.

Found texts are important overall in my work, because I often try to make something new from what is already there. The same goes for found images that I recontextualize. I should probably add here that I’m also a poet, and studied literature. The texts I use are often quite banal too, like texts from newspapers, dictionaries, emails and ads. My next book will be a dialogue created from found “conversational phrases”, and with the Belgian publisher Johan Velter. I’m also working on a book of autosummaries of literary works.

Who are some of the artists you consider influential for your work?

My influences are mostly literary. In the case of The Man of the Crowd I see some influence for instance from Beckett, especially his Film, but also from literary theories about intertextuality. When it comes to other artists, I’ve learned a lot from Dutch conceptual artist and philosopher Willem Buijs (†2007) who was my uncle and introduced me to many works in literature and art and in general to looking at the world in a philosophical way. (I recently saw there is a youtube video showing some of his work). A few years ago I was lucky enough to meet Chris Burnett who is a wonderful artist, person, and educator. He was at that time director of Visual Studies Workshop, and both his own work and his courses on topics such as photography as writing were very important in the development of my work. We’ve been collaborating on several projects, for instance co-editing Image Process Literature, a book that will showcase new directions in visual literature, with some thirty artists and writers participating.

Many thanks to Elisabeth for taking the time to answer our questions. Be sure to stop by the SRO Photo Gallery before April 17, 2010 to see the show.

550 Nanometers, 16 x 28'', archival inkjet print, 2005.

Jay Gould’s exhibition, The Participatory Universe, opens Monday, February 15, and runs through March 13, 2010.  We are delighted to be showing this work and recently asked Jay a few questions:

Please begin by offering a bit more detail about how and which scientific concepts inspire you and your work?

For many years, no matter what artwork I was working on, I would be reading about science in my spare time and even taking extra courses in conceptual science at the University of Wisconsin.  Mostly it was because I have always enjoyed the study of science and its line of questioning, but at this point I was not mixing art and science.  Eventually I made the decision to go forth and really put all of this reading and science studies to use with my own visual language. Initially this turned out to be a difficult task, and lead to lots of unsuccessful work. Though it was these failed experiments that lead to the work currently being shown at the SRO gallery.  When I began working on the Participatory Universe I was mostly interested in exploring my personal understanding of physics, primarily more contemporary ideas such as string theory and quantum mechanics.  However, I loosened up pretty quickly and let myself freely observe the world and explore whatever topic I felt suited the scene that had caught my attention.  To date, the fields of science that I primarily address are physics, math, geology, and biology, which I am constantly trying to relate with more personal stories of history, love, life, understanding and imagination.

As one who specifically integrates scientific topics into his photographic projects, YOU seem to go against the notion that art and science are separate discourses. Two articles on this topic that come to mind are: James Elkins’, “Aesthetics and the Two Cultures: Why Art and Science Should be Allowed to Go their Separate Ways” (2008) and Leo Steinberg’s, “Art and Science: Do They Need to Be Yoked?” (1986). How do you position your work against or within these arguments?

I’m not familiar with these two specific essays, however I gather that they present the common argument of whether science and art belong together.  I am a believer in the essential connection between the fields of art and science; that both areas are made up of explorers who rely upon tools to investigate things beyond our natural senses.  For example, a microscope investigates processes that are too small for us to see, while a brush may paint the workings of one’s imagination, and both methods are looking beyond vision, touch, taste and sound.  There is a common need for both areas to put ideas in terms that are more accessible, or more tangible.  Usually through metaphors or diagrams, both of which are harnessed by art and science.  It is still my belief that artists learn from scientists and vise-versa.  Since we are all out to communicate something, learning how each other does this, or better yet, helping one another can be quite fruitful.  There are lots of classic examples of this, my favorite being about the famous physicist Niels Bohr, who referenced cubism to better understand quantum mechanics.  Though cubism had nothing to do with quantum, he saw something in the language of art that became an excellent metaphor for what he was struggling with.

Personally I have always included scientist friends in the conversation of my work to hear their reaction and insight.  It has helped form how I work and supported my resolve that I’m not offending or mocking their studies too far.  Now I am going a step further by working with faculty and students of science and engineering at Louisiana Tech University, where I hope that our feedback and support of one another will be mutually beneficial.

Walking Throne, 16 x 28'', archival inkjet print, 2006.

With regards to the aesthetic experience of your work, what aspects of the objects you make do you believe come to the forefront, their contents, the formal aspects of their construction, their materiality/objecthood, or something else?

I don’t think I’ve ever been asked that… and it’s a tough one.  For me, I’ve always worked with objects that have initially raised a question in my mind.  This might be that I don’t know what it is and therefore need to explore it with a photograph, or that I am in love with its form and want to give it further meaning by changing its context or adding a story to it.  Either way, I need to have a sense of wonder about an object, or a sense of what something could become with some manipulation.  Of course, it does depend on the image.  In some I am exploring what and object is and what its history might be, such as Fissure Erosion and Season Cycle.  In other images I am allowing an object or setting to become a backdrop for another idea, such as in Amino Acids or Bonds.  Through my interaction with these objects a story is developed that is meant to explore a question and give insight into my imagination and line of thinking.

Your work shares some formal similarities with John Wood’s. Who are some of the artists you look at or influence you in your research, and what in their work attracts you?

I am always on the search for work that might influence me, or typically make me jealous.  Photographically, I have always looked towards Robert and Shauna ParkeHarrison, Kahn and Selesnick, and Duane Michals, just to name a few.  They are excellent storytellers and have an aesthetic that matches their meaning, which I admire.  Conceptually, I love Joan Fontcuberta, Mike Mandel, and anyone else that takes advantage of the photograph’s relationship to truth and evidence. I am also influenced by the use of information design and artists who make viewing charts a beautiful and interesting experience.  So many of these artists are making work that isn’t about immediate understanding of a concept, but about spending time with a diagram and really figuring things out for one’s self.

You recently (2006) graduated from Savannah College of Art & Design with an MFA in photography and started teaching at Louisiana Tech University in 2007.  How has the transition from graduate student to faculty member affected your work?

I’ll admit that the transition has left me with much less time and energy to work on personal projects.  When I’m making artwork I need to really concentrate and be left alone, and that is not something that happens easily when you are a teacher.  I am learning how to balance my time and let go of thoughts of school during the weekends, if only for a day at a time.  As I mentioned before, we are working towards forging some connections with the engineering and science departments here at Louisiana Tech; my hope is that these connections will create a foundation for making new work that utilizes some of the resources and connections available and pushes my collaborative concept further.

Many thanks to Jay for taking the time to answer our questions. Be sure to stop by the SRO Gallery between Feb. 15-Mar. 13 to see the show.