Category — Artist

Untitled (moth study), 8 x 8", platinum palladium print, 2008.

Christa Bowden’s exhibition, Still Flight, opens Monday, January 11, and runs through February 14.  We are delighted to be showing this work and recently asked Christa a few questions:

How does your choice to use contemporary photographic processes (scanners, digital files, and archival inkjet printing) in conjunction with 19th century processes inform your work?

I have been using the flatbed scanner as my primary camera since 1999, when I was in graduate school at the University of Georgia. My early explorations with the scanner were primarily figurative, juxtaposing sections of the human body with natural objects. The human body has slowly worked its way out of the imagery, but the natural objects have remained. It was not a clean break between different bodies of work, but rather a natural progression. I think that this leads me to look at my current work not strictly as still life, but rather as constructed (as opposed to found) imagery. This is a common factor with all scanography, since the artist must always define how the subject is placed within the rectangle of the scanner. Although the moths are visually different from my earlier figurative work, the process has remained much the same.

In terms of 19th century processes, I began incorporating these into my work in 2007. The college where I teach, Washington and Lee University, has a short spring term. When I needed to develop a photography course that would fit within a 6-week format, an alternative process course was an obvious choice. I never thought that the course would influence my own work, but I found through teaching that I loved the hands-on nature and limited predictability of the processes. It was such a stark contrast to the years that I had spent making work with Photoshop and inkjet printers. Getting a perfect print with an inkjet printer is relatively easy for me. Getting a perfect platinum print is a challenge for me, and therefore substantially more rewarding when I make a good one. No two prints are ever exactly the same, and I find this interesting as well. This is especially true with ambrotypes, which are one-of-a-kind. This concept was entirely new to me as a photographer, where all of my ideas about my work had previously been built upon the notion of repeatability.

Since you work in so many different photographic processes, in which ways do different photographic outputs (inkjet, platinum-palladium print, or ambrotype) affect the intended contents of your work? And do you consider some more effective than others?

I don’t know that I view any one process as more effective than the other, they are just different, and I love each process for different reasons. I appreciate inkjet prints for their precision, detail, and flexibility of scale. I appreciate platinum & palladium prints for the range of tone, and the nature of the chemistry to sink into and become a part of the substrate on which it is printed. Unlike an inkjet print, where the image seems to sit on top of the paper, the image and paper become one in a platinum & palladium print. I appreciate ambrotypes because they can make any subject mysterious and seemingly fluid, as if floating upon the glass. I also love the preciousness, one-of-a-kind, and sculptural qualities that ambrotypes have.

There are also purely pragmatic reasons for using one process or another for an image. For example, I have yet to find a translucent vellum paper that is compatible with archival Epson pigment inks. For this reason, I began making platinum and palladium prints on vellum. It was Christopher James who suggested to me that I print some of the moths on vellum, to add more dimensionality to the subject, and create a relationship between the paper and the moth wings. I found that layering a platinum & palladium print on vellum over a pigmented inkjet print created a level of depth and dimensionality that I simply could not achieve with either a single inkjet print or a single platinum & palladium print. I love the idea that I can take a 19th century process and a 21st century process and incorporate them together to achieve my desired effect.

What advice do you have for those wishing to begin working with the ambrotype process, and are there any specific books or workshops you recommend?

I was fortunate enough to learn wet plate collodion from a friend who had taken a workshop with Mark and France Scully Osterman. The Ostermans are masters of this process, and I would suggest that anyone who is interested in making ambrotypes take a workshop with them. Mark Osterman also wrote an excellent reference book, The Wet Plate Process, A Working Guide, which is available on their web site.

For artists working in alternative photographic processes, a network of peers is essential. The f295 organization is a group of alt process artists, and their symposiums and workshops are great. I would suggest that anyone who is interested in any kind of alternative photography join this organization.

And of course, anyone interested in alternative processes should own Christopher James’ The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes. This is essentially the bible of alt process technique, and is very detailed yet easy to read. I have been able to teach myself a number of processes straight from his book. Christopher also teaches several beginning and advanced workshops each year, and his workshops are very intensive, yet a lot of fun. Christopher is a true scholar of this area of photography, and is not the least bit proprietary about his research and discoveries.

From the series: Roots & Nests

Other artists such as Jayne Hinds Bidaut, Joseph Scheer or Mike & Doug Starn have made work with moths that resembles yours in many ways (media used or subjects photographed).  Which artists or ideas or others would you say have influenced your work?

The Starns are a huge influence for me, and two of my favorite artists. I do not presume that I will ever achieve their level of artistry. Every new project that they undertake seems to blow my mind. I couldn’t possibly list all of the ways that they have influenced me, but most have nothing to do with moths as a subject. I adore their experimental approach to photography. They have done so much to move the medium beyond the idea of a matted and framed flat print on a wall. Their exploration of transparency, depth, and multiple layers of imagery is incredible.

I love the work of Jayne Hinds Bidaut. Her tintypes are stunning. I feel that I have something in common with her, in that she utilizes a 19th century process to reinvent and add mystery to the visual appearance of natural subjects. I feel that I have less in common with Joseph Scheer, who takes a more realistic, color, and specimen-based approach to photographing moths.

Perhaps a less obvious influence for me is the work of Michael Kenna. His simplicity and perfection of composition, minimalism, and juxtaposition of light and dark tones have all been a big influence on me. His work has taught me the importance of a simple line in a photograph, and how to use negative space as a critical component of the image.

There is a rich history of photographing moths and other insects.  In what ways does your work extend this dialog or venture in other directions?

Many subjects have been photographed again and again, despite the relatively short history of photography relative to other mediums in art. It is one of the toughest challenges for a photographer to take these well-tread paths and figure out how to do something that is not too derivative or redundant. Much attention has been given to these subjects for good reason: they are visually very interesting. The best that an artist can do is to educate themselves on what has been done before, and attempt to evaluate a subject in a new way without being too derivative. I do not know if I always achieve this goal, but I certainly try.

Specific to my Still Flight body of work, one of the goals of the project is to explore and evaluate where photography is today, versus where it was shortly after its beginning. I am fascinated by how process and scale can affect a particular subject. Looking at a moth in a tiny, precious 7 ¼ x 7 ¼” ambrotype, and then looking at the same moth in a huge 40 x 40” inkjet print from a scan, will provide two vastly different experiences with the same subject. I want to challenge viewers looking at my work to think about whether a contemporary digital interpretation of a subject is superior to an antique interpretation. Is bigger and sharper always better? How can a process transform a subject? I hope that people looking at my work will ask these questions, and if not, simply appreciate the beauty and difference that each process brings to the subjects.

Personally, I think that photography is in a wonderful and exciting place right now. With the resurgence and scholarship occurring in antique photographic processes, combined with the constant advancements in digital imaging, photographic artists have an incredible set of tools at their disposal.

Many thanks to Christa for taking the time to answer our questions.  Be sure to come by and see the rich combination of ambrotypes, pigmented inkjet prints, and platinum and palladium prints, layered over pigment prints.  They need to be seen in person to be fully appreciated.

© Walead Beshty

New Photography 2009 is up at the Museum of Modern Art through January 11, 2010.  There are a few videos, with artists featured in the show, discussing the exhibit and photography in general on their blog.

Has anyone had a chance to see this exhibit?

The Game, 10 x 10″, selenium toned gelatin silver print, 2007.

Frank Hamrick’s exhibition is up and runs through December 12, 2009.  We are excited to be showing his work and recently asked him a few questions:

You have chosen to photograph in black and white with a (4×5? 8×10?) view camera.  What photographic issues or ideas does this allow you to specifically address?

I actually use a variety of cameras in my work. These photographs being shown at Texas Tech were created using a 4×5 view camera, a 2 ¼ Hasselblad, a Mamiya 7 and a Polaroid 600SE camera that uses 3 ¼ x 4 ¼ positive/negative film. Sometimes I consciously choose a specific camera when making a photograph. Other times I simply use what is available. There are other photographs from this series made using color film and digital cameras. They just aren’t part of this particular exhibit

A few years ago I began my job at Louisiana Tech University. Some of the equipment was new to me. I had used medium and large format cameras before, but not these particular models. So I would bring a camera home from school to make some photographs around the house. This allowed me to become comfortable with the equipment so I would feel more confident explaining to students how these cameras work and what kind of images they create.

A friend gave me the Polaroid camera in trade for one of my photographs. My dad bought the Mamiya 7 for me as a graduation present when I received my BFA.

The thing I have learned and now try to pass on to my students is the understanding that each camera has its own capabilities and limitations. They have characteristics they project upon the final image. The same thing goes with various films and papers. Digital tools and materials are the same as well.

Different cameras affect how a photographer approaches a subject and also affect how the model interacts with the camera and photographer. I know I’m going to create a different photograph with a waist level medium format camera strapped around my neck in comparison to a view camera mounted on a tripod.

Often I will photograph the same subject with multiple cameras knowing each camera will force me to approach the subject in a different way.

One of my goals is for an ambiguity of time to exist in my photographs. I’m not trying to make them look old. I just don’t want someone to look at my photographs and say, “Wow, he really captured the essence of 2005 with that photograph.” I consciously avoid fads in my imagery. Photographing in black & white helps dodge that trap whereas color can in time look dated.

Black and white photographs and view cameras have existed as long as photography has and they will continue to exist. Viewers can look at my images and think they were made fifty years ago or last week. Hopefully ten years from now they will still be seen as having that vagueness, “Was this photograph made in 1977 or 2019?”

With so many photographic artists increasingly using digital printing for their photographic images, could you tell us some of the reasons you continue to print in selenium toned gelatin silver?

I want the work to last, to be archival. That’s one reason. Time has shown that these kinds of prints are stable.

I have done some digital printing, but my best-known images tend to be traditional selenium toned gelatin silver prints. The software, printers, inks and papers used in digital printing are continuing to improve, but I still get a certain feeling of instability in digital printing. By instability I mean advancements are constantly being made. Inks and papers evolve. It is great and I take what I need from it when I need it, but I don’t care for my work to be a guinea pig right now. There’s a saying that the cutting edge of technology is also the bleeding edge. I realize darkroom printing is not the latest thing, but that is not what I’m after. Making work that holds up conceptually and physically are my goals.

I worked in a library for a few years. The archivist there showed us the difference between the 18th century books made from rag paper and the 20th century books made from wood pulp. The paperback books were falling apart because of cheap glue and newsprint.

I get a great deal of satisfaction out of making these traditional prints especially when so many people are now making digital prints or sending their files off to a lab to be printed by someone else. Each print I make is exposed and processed individually in the darkroom. The photographs are precious because each individual print represents a portion of my life.

Your photographs are beautifully lit and composed and you speak of your work from a romantic viewpoint.  How do ideas of beauty influence your work?

Romantic… hmmm… that’s interesting. I’ve never thought of it that way or heard anyone else describe it like that.

Personally, I believe I recognize the beauty in people, places and objects that many others might not think of if I asked someone to imagine a beautiful house or a beautiful flower.

This year a friend gave me a book about the Japanese concept Wabi Sabi, which basically identifies itself as imperfect, impermanent things that are seen as aesthetically pleasing. Your favorite pair of jeans or a well-worn t-shirt that you choose first from the closet could be examples of Wabi Sabi. This philosophy fits the way I see things and what I choose to photograph.

Perfect can be boring. I gravitate to the scarred and twisted trees. I focus on individuality. I prefer to photograph things as they are naturally, which includes using natural lighting.

These images conjure up thoughts of survival and natural selection, along with the idea of an individual finding one’s place in history. Could you talk about your personal connection to land and place that is being addressed by these images?

I grew up in a rural part of Georgia where there was a dairy farm half a mile to the north, another dairy half a mile to the south and a ranch right next door to the west. I did not have cable television or a Nintendo to suck away my youth. So my time after school was spent picking blackberries on the side of the road and wandering in the woods with a number of dogs. In the summers I would drill water wells with my grandfather and my uncles. During college I briefly worked on a small organic farm. Then I started growing my own organic garden.

This background has given me a deep connection to the land. I know first hand that our resources come from the land. I don’t grow all of my vegetables, but the food I do grow gives me a greater appreciation for the food I buy at the store or in a restaurant. I understand the time and effort that goes into its creation, so I respect it more and try not to waste any of it.

Growing a garden here in Louisiana has created a connection for me with this land that I previously did not have. I feel connected to the food I harvest. It means a lot to me to invite friends over and feed them with the food I grew in the yard. It also means a lot to photograph these plants that I have been involved with. I’m not buying carrots at the store to photograph. I’m planting seeds and patiently waiting months to harvest and use them as my subject matter.

I don’t want to buy everything I consume. I want to be able to produce some of the things I need. People are often referred to as consumers. I want to be seen as a producer. My artwork along with my teaching are my contributions back to society.

I speak with my students about the difference between being a consumer and a producer. They have to decide how they want to be remembered, for making thought provoking pieces of artwork or for playing a lot of video games.

Our culture is becoming increasingly impersonal. We don’t know where our food comes from or what is in it. We have friends online that we never actually meet. Our daily activities are becoming more virtual through devices and technology like camera phones and text messages. They make life more efficient but we don’t know how to deal with real objects or how to interact with people face to face.

So the quality connections we make with each other are becoming more meaningful because we have less of that in our everyday life. Getting a hand written letter these days takes on a significance and value it never had before.

In many ways, these images are aesthetically and conceptually similar to those of Keith Carter.  Are there specific artists working in similar ways that you with whom you identify?

Joy Christiansen-Erb and I worked together for a year. One of the things I picked up from her was the concept of a photographic family. For Joy, Jon Yamashiro, her undergraduate professor, was her photography dad, and Susan kae Grant, her graduate professor was her photography mother.

I identify with that concept and feel that other photographers and artists in other media can also be members of my creative family. I think of Joy as one of my photo sisters and my students are my photo children.

I’d like to think of Keith Carter as some distant uncle I discovered when I was in grad school. We have since connected with each other in the past couple of years. I have one of his postcards on my office wall and he has one of mine on his wall. Keith has been supportive of my work. This past year he selected my Standing Broom photograph to be in a show he juried and gave it an honorable mention.

Both Keith and I are photographers who grew up and continue to work in the south. I believe we both find subject matter in this region that is important to us and important to others once one of us holds it up for others to see. Although I realize more people pay attention when he holds up something for others to view.

I believe artists see what others might not otherwise notice and find ways to say things that everyone feels but can’t find the right way to express it.

In college I looked up to photographers like Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand. Guys who wandered the streets photographing in every city they passed through. Now I identify with artists that have a personal connection with their subject matter. Abelardo Morell, Emmet Gowin, and Sally Mann are photographers that immediately come to mind as artists with whom I identify.

Artists in other mediums that are important to me include the songwriter Sam Beam from the band Iron & Wine, Jim Sherraden the printmaker who manages Hatch Show Print in Nashville and David Clark, the writer from Cochran, Georgia.

Could you share with us some insights you have gained through this project on ways that your home functions?

I have realized home is not a place. Home is my attitude towards a place. It’s less about how my home functions and more about how I function in a location, how familiar I feel with a place.

Many thanks to Frank for his thoughtful answers.  Be sure to come see the show before we break for the holidays.

Blackboard #36, 16 x 20", silver gelatin print, 2006.

We recently had the privilege of asking Meggan Gould a few questions about her artwork.  Exhibiting internationally and currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Art at Bowdoin College, Meggan takes a critical look at the way photographs are used to visualize the world.

Your website offers up seven separate series you have been working on.  While they are quite different in visual terms, they all seem to wrestle with the idea of what a photograph is and how they are used to visualize the world.  Could you discuss any over-arching idea(s) which might be informing these projects?

You have touched on it in your question – I am interested in probing the idea of what a photograph is and the relationship of the photographic image to vision. I have continually been struck by the relatively limited way in which we habitually approach the photograph. This began, in my earlier work, by questioning the idea of how we hold the camera and frame images – the association between the eye and the camera – and trying to incorporate more corporeal freedom into the photographic act; can a photograph differentiate between the visual qualities of attention and distraction, for example? The contemporary context of visual upheaval has continued to inform and push these questions – the act of physical engagement with the camera and the image formed therein has shifted, as has our interaction with the resultant image (physical vs. virtual). Much of my most recent work has struggled more with the latter issue, with how photographs themselves function in the world at large, as physical objects or as pixels.

Could you talk about the decision to show your “verso” series as photographs of the backs of photographs, as opposed to showing the actual objects with their backs facing the viewer?

I never considered framing and presenting the objects themselves as an option with this group of work. The act of photographing the photographs – the photographic act of attention afforded to the (ostensibly non-photogenic) surface of the back of the photograph – is a critical part of this series for me. I want these surfaces to emerge as picture spaces in and of themselves, and in order for that to happen they needed to succumb to the same act of mechanical reproduction that generally renders scenes/objects “photo-worthy.” This also permits me, of course, to present these photographs slightly larger than scale; making such mundane objects larger-than-life allows me to (hopefully) provoke a new visual interaction with them.

Also, the “verso” series contains markings that hint at (and your statement affirms) their belonging to family photo albums or being personal mementos.  These are very specific types of photographs.  Could you talk about that decision and in what ways using these types of images influences the work?

In the broad collection that I have amassed of these images, there are very few that are not from the context of personal mementos – a few press photos, military photos, etc., but mostly I am interested in looking at how photographs are customarily used, touched, written upon, folded, cherished, torn… in how photographs live in the world. These have come from collections lent to me, from my own family’s albums and boxes, and from flea markets galore. I have not deliberately excluded categories of photographic imagery, in fact, but have certainly gravitated towards sifting through collections that are distinctly personal because, I believe, of the way that the marks, stains, and text on the photographs point to or hint at the lives that these photographs have led as objects in the world. Surprising connections have emerged – the number of interpersonal, letter-like messages, for example, in text snippets scrawled on the photo backs, the ways in which text points to “correct” interpretations of the silver gelatin information, the common use of humor, and the interplay between public/private notations.

These are often not photographs that were ever intended to be seen outside of a very specific context and yet, decades later in a flea market, they retain no knowable context. I have always been fascinated by our persistent desire to know exactly what is depicted in a photograph – the eternal “but… what is it?” question that surrounds photographic looking, the gesture of flipping the photograph over in this quest to decipher. The photographs I have chosen are, overall, so divorced from their original context that they are entirely unknowable, and we are left only with our own visual pleasure therewith.

You often use found imagery (“verso”, “go ogle”) and your blog notes a personal fascination with found photographs.  In which ways does recontextualizing found imagery affect your work?

As I mentioned above, a lot of this boils down to not wanting the original context of a photograph to matter – not wanting to be so overwhelmed by decoding the who-is-it or what-is-it representational factor that we forget to experience visual pleasure. Found photographs are profoundly unknowable, leaving us, as viewers, fully in control of how we read them. We are so used to specific caption explanations, titles, etc. that very precisely direct our readings of photographs; I love the unadulterated moment with a context-less photograph.

Some of my work has played with recontextualizing found photographs via caption/title information, however. The “Go Ogle” series plays on this idea of text/image relationship, but only in a computer-generated association. A found image of a dog, for example, might come up during a Google Image Search for “cat,” for example, due to how the search algorithm works; no human sifts through all internet-based imagery assigning representational value to specific jpegs. This series of work played off of that, using 100+ found images for any specific search to distill out a visual essence, via a mathematical averaging process, of text/image association.

Verso #62, 19 x 13", archival pigment print, 2008.

Are the “blackboard” and “verso” series ever shown together, since they both present subjects in transition?

They have not been shown together to date, but I would very much love for that connection to happen.

You utilize and focus on old (blackboards and printed photographs) and new (Google and computer screens) technology in your images. Could you talk about the role of technology in your work?

I can’t seem to avoid this obsession with how we live with and create photographs, and technology is an unavoidable part of it. I suppose that for me it is not about technologies per se but rather about how and what we look at, and how and what we decide is worthy of capturing photographically, through whichever technology we happen to be using.

I don’t necessarily make a distinct division between old vs. new, and in an odd way it seems to have boiled down to how we use mutable, generally rectangular surfaces in our lives: backs of photographs, computer screens, blackboards, camera view-finders. I tend to see each as a framed picture space in and of itself, and am fascinated by how the pictures that form on these surfaces shift over time, and how rarely these moments are rendered as photographic images. These are surfaces habitually viewed only in the context of specific information (text on the palimpsest of a blackboard, notes on the back of a photograph, mouse action on a computer desktop); the technology itself is irrelevant to the moment of visual cohesion that I am looking for within each framed space. Whatever the technology, can I use the photographic image to delve further into habits of looking, and habits of over-looking?

Do you have any upcoming projects or works in progress that you are especially excited about?

I will be part of a group show at Colby-Sawyer College in January-February 2010, and I will have a solo show at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art from March to June 2010 – the latter will be the first time that a number of different series of my work will be shown together, and I am excited for some of the connections that you asked about to be visually manifest in one exhibition space. I am working on a new body of work that hasn’t quite made it to the website yet, but which continues to probe issues of my physical relationship with the act of photographing, as well as with screen culture.

Many thanks to Meggan for taking the time to answer our questions.  Be sure to take a look at her website and check out her upcoming exhibitions.