PHOTOGRAPHY
Photography was my primary artistic activity for about ten years, finally petering out with the new millennium and the realization that digital photography had become the proverbial “elephant in the room”. The choice seemed simple. I was doomed to either embark on a very different way of producing images – which seemed not to engage the tactile processes of traditional art making - or engage in a charming anachronism, like writing letters with a fountain pen or typewriter. Neither seemed very appealing, so that was that.
My imagery, techniques and presentation had always been about traditional photographic history anyway, especially the techniques of early movie making and the visual qualities associated with the Photo-Secession. Typically, the process began with a storyboard-like concept that juxtaposed pop culture and turn-of-the-century sensibilities. That was then translated into an illusionistic “set” made from pre-existing objects, an elaborate constructed model (often made of painted plaster) or a life-sized tableau with costumes and props. Lighting consisted of daylight and artificial light sources including flashlights and candles. The darkroom tricks were the usual ones of dodging and burning in, as well as tilting the printing paper, masking and employing crumpled glassine to manipulate emphasis and detail. The toning process was an exercise in the deliberate misuse of conventional methods to achieve inconsistencies that imply the passage of time and accident.
A simpler technique was also used which involved making a photomontage and then retouching it to produce a convincing “fool the eye” image (the two examples shown here are “Eggplant Parmiganino” and “Ki-Mona Li-Sa”). My “invented histories” incorporated many of these images as pseudo-documentation, approximating, as they do, the air-brushed fakery of old-fashioned tabloid exposes. Those “histories”, especially when presented as slide talks, benefitted from showing source material created in a variety of ways since it is that uneven texture which seems to most closely approximate genuine documentation.
The “Sculpture” section of this webpage shows some of the models used in making the photographs, and a comparison between the two is a nice indication of the transformative power of the photographic medium.