Aperture's Blog, page 179

PhotoBook Lust: Ed Templeton

From the upcoming PhotoBook Review 006, we are featuring a web exclusive from the PhotoBook Lust section: Ed Templeton remembers 61 Pimlico: The Secret Journal of Henry Hayler, edited by Bill Jay. Below is a short intro to the PhotoBook Lust section of the PBR by guest editor Bruno Ceschel

In putting together this issue, I reached out to a wide range of bibliophiles and artists and asked them to discuss their personal relationship with a specific photobook.I asked them not to approach this as a book review, but rather as a personal account of a photobook that had provoked (or still provokes) the feelings of lust, desire, or arousal. I was interested less in an intellectual engagement, and more in something that each person has been unaccountably drawn to: a book that has obsessed them, whose pages have been pored over, consumed, loved; a book that has been very significant to each person’s life, which brought them into the world they would like to be a part of. The results range from covetous reactions to books that triggered new ways of thinking about photography, to those that inspired outright salacious responses. You’ll find these contributions contaminating the whole issue, wrapping themselves around and between pages—an uncontainable account of Photobook Lust.

—Bruno Ceschel

Bill Jay

Photographs by Henry Hayler

61 Pimlico: The Secret Journal of Henry Hayler

Nazraeli Press

Portland, Oregon, 1998

I was in Sydney, Australia in the year 2000, and while in the Museum of Contemporary Art on Circular Quay, I stumbled upon the beautiful volume 61 Pimlico: The Secret Journal of Henry Hayler. It’s the story of a Victorian-era photographer who shot nudes that were a scandal in his day; the photographs were mostly destroyed until Bill Jay found a precious few images hidden in an old journal at a car-boot sale in Maidenhead, England. I couldn’t stop looking at the images, devouring the story of how they were made and the sex Hayler was having with his subjects. They are reminiscent of E. J. Bellocq’s Storyville portraits, but the faces are all hidden or obscured with framing or a turn of the head, as if the sitter suddenly looked away as the shutter was released. Many of Hayler’s sitters, it turns out, were society ladies who wished to be photographed anonymously in the nude, to what purpose I do not know. There are only nine images handsomely tipped into the book, and each one is oozing with a sort of clandestine naughtiness, seen through eyes that are new with discovery of the female form and the pleasures of the flesh.

I would return to this book often back home in California; the images haunted me. They still do. There is so much sex and nudity available at the click of a button now—any act or type one could conceive of is there, if you only search—making these glass-plate negatives and the time and effort that went into each one a thousand times more erotic, in my opinion. The social mores surrounding the time in which they were created make these nude photos a special kind of contraband. They continue to cause an ache in my loins that cannot be found on the Internet.

—

Ed Templeton is a California-based artist, professional skateboarder, and the owner of Toy Machine skateboard company.

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Ed Templeton appeared first on Aperture Foundation NY.

Pipe and Tie-Dye

A portfolio of images by Matthew Spiegelman from his new artist’s book Officioné.

Image © and courtesy Matthew Spiegelman

Image © and courtesy Matthew Spiegelman

Image © and courtesy Matthew Spiegelman

Image © and courtesy Matthew Spiegelman

Image © and courtesy Matthew Spiegelman

In Matthew Spiegelman’s new self-published artist’s book Officioné the artist directs the lens of his large-format camera onto the world of Marijuana, presenting a lucid examination of the controlled substances’ contested mythos. The close-cropped photos in Spiegelman’s book focus in on the glass pipes, smoke, clothing, and the tropical plants themselves. Clean and precise, the photos do not attempt to get to the essence of what the drug is, but rather take a knowing look at the fascinating vernacular created by its users. Officioné comes in a hand-bound edition of 10, and though the book was published in an extremely limited quantity, it also lives as a photo-animated video here.

Image © and courtesy Matthew Spiegelman

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From the Pipe to Exhalation

A portfolio of images by Matthew Spiegelman from his new artist’s book Officioné.

Image © and courtesy Matthew Spiegelman

Image © and courtesy Matthew Spiegelman

Image © and courtesy Matthew Spiegelman

Image © and courtesy Matthew Spiegelman

Image © and courtesy Matthew Spiegelman

In Matthew Spiegelman’s new self-published artist’s book Officioné the artist directs the lens of his large-format camera onto the world of Marijuana, presenting a lucid examination of the controlled substances’ contested mythos. The close-cropped photos in Spiegelman’s book focus in on the glass pipes, smoke, clothing, and the tropical plants themselves. Clean and precise, the photos do not attempt to get to the essence of what the drug is, but rather take a knowing look at the fascinating vernacular created by its users. Officioné comes in a hand-bound edition of 10, and though the book is made in an extremely limited quantity, it also lives as a photo-animated video here.

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Into the Museum

Adam O’Reilly sits down with Pierre Le Hors to discuss his residency and exhibit at the Camera Club of New York, March 19-April 12, 2014.

Pierre Le Hors, Vermeer 2014. Courtesy the artist and The Camera Club of NY

Pierre Le Hors, Romanesco 2014. Courtesy the artist and The Camera Club of NY

Pierre Le Hors, Regroupings 2014. Courtesy the artist and The Camera Club of NY

Pierre Le Hors, Ewer 2014. Courtesy the artist and The Camera Club of NY

As one of the 2013 Darkroom residents at the Camera Club of New York, Pierre Le Hors’ solo exhibition, Period Act, presents a selection of work he produced using exclusively CCNY’s darkroom. The exhibition uses the museum as its point of departure; specifically, it interprets the viewing experience one has when walking amongst hundreds of vitrines and displays at a museum like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Through a series of black-and-white interior photos, still lifes, studio shots, and photograms, Le Hors’ photographs invite the viewer to follow him in his research, poetic tangents, and darkroom mastery.

Adam O’Reilly: Where did the title of the show, Period Act, originate?

Pierre Le Hors: The title initially came from a photo of a period room at the Brooklyn Museum—in the show it’s the one that looks a bit like a Vermeer painting. That photo was a jumping off point for me, and from there I became interested in thinking about the experience of walking through a museum. The American Wing photos in the show were taken at the Met, and to me that museum in particular is a place where time and geography seem to collapse. The longer one spends in such a vast place, the more the objects on display become formalized, and their historical specificity becomes secondary. Of course you can read the wall text and become engaged with each object—but overall, the experience I am interested in is about considering all of these objects from different cultures and eras on a level playing field. I mean not only the art objects themselves, but also the display structures that house them, and the architecture of the museum itself.

AO: The American Wing photos are a formal investigation of the space, there is almost this total disregard for the objects on display in their composition.



PLH: Even though they are photos of objects on display, they are not about the American nature of these objects, or even just about the objects themselves. It’s more about trying to resolve that entire space—the objects, the glass vitrines framing the central courtyard, the vitrines framing other vitrines, the light that comes through the side windows, the way it reflects and plays off all those surfaces. I wanted to find out how that entire space could be activated in the pictures, and broken down on a formal level.

Pierre Le Hors, American Wing (1 – 10) 2014. Courtesy the artist and The Camera Club of NY

AO: I find it easy to walk through the Met and not look at anything specifically, just enjoying the objects piecemeal; taking some things in, ignoring others. I take it this is similar to your own experience?

PLH: To me that is indicative of wandering around a museum, when things are no longer specific, and become more about display and arrangements. There is pleasure in that. However, I realize this is tied to my own position and experience, I don’t mean to say that is true of everyone who walks through there. People go to museums for many reasons, of course—to see something specific, or sometimes to just be surrounded by these cultural artifacts.

Pierre Le Hors, Untitled 2014. Courtesy the artist and The Camera Club of NY

AO: Aside from being familiar with your work, my point of entry for this show was your press release for the show. The first paragraph is a reflection on the Met, and then in the next paragraph you refer specifically to a painting by Juan Dò, which in your show, you have a reproduction taped to the wall. Of all the paintings in the Met, why that one specifically?

PLH: When I started taking pictures at the Met, I noticed that painting in the background of one of my pictures. After sitting with that image for a while, I came back to the museum and actually looked at the painting in person. What is this painting? I was curious about it, so I found it on the Met’s website, in their catalog. It is a seventeenth-century Spanish painting, originally one of a suite of five paintings meant to depict the five senses, this one was the sense of sight [the Met only owns this one]. The girl in the painting is holding the mirror, and her other hand is up by her face, like she might be fixing her hair. It’s a strange pose. But the tension in the painting lies in her gaze, you can see her face in the mirror and she is looking off frame, to the right, at something we can’t see. This was interesting to me on multiple levels, first that this is a photographic device, this notion of “cropping” only existed only after photography. Secondly that the subject of the painting, ostensibly, is visual perception itself—in some way it seemed to focus the whole show around visual perception. I mean not only the black-and-white works, but also the color photograms which are given equal weight in the show. I don’t know if that comes through clearly, but I am ok with a little ambiguity, and leaving the viewer to bring the pieces together.

Pierre Le Hors, Slow Chance 2014. Courtesy the artist and The Camera Club of NY

Pierre Le Hors, In Time, Nico Line, and Still Life with To Go Cup 2014. Courtesy the artist and The Camera Club of NY

AO: The other black-and-white photos in the exhibit look like studio shots, how do they fit together with the Juan Dò painting?



PLH: The studio photos play off various art-historical or photographic conventions, but they’re a little messed up: the cauliflower image relates to photography’s use in documenting natural forms, but also has this psychedelic quality. There is a very staged renaissance-type still life with an extra coffee cup, something someone might have left on the set by accident. The picture of the cat jumping is somewhere between a staged shot and a “decisive-moment” instant, while the photo of the sculpture seems at first to be a studio picture but is actually taken at the Brooklyn Museum.

AO: The counterpoint in the show is the photograms that you made in the darkroom. Rather then giving the viewer’s eye something to rest on between the high contrast black-and-white photos, you’ve done the opposite.

PLH: I am interested in how the eye takes in those surfaces, what exactly they do visually, and how they push against the black-and-white photos, almost like noise or static. Your eye can’t fully rest on them, because there is no focal point and no depth, only surface and pattern. Each part of the image is allowed equal compositional weight, so the gaze is dispersed rather than focused, which enhances their flatness.

AO: In your artist statement on the CCNY website you write, “I want these images to speak to a certain loss of innocence for the young medium of photography, as it enters an age still grappling with notions of subjectivity and photographic truth.” I imagine you wrote that before you started the residency, but I was thinking about that statement while looking at the show where you approach a wide range of photographic styles.

PLH: This is not an original thought by any means, but we are in a phase where photography is both very self-reflective and self-reflexive. I think it’s easy to lose sight that photography is a young medium, it’s only been about 160 years if you want to trace it back the very beginning. And that feels like a long time to us, but it is an incredibly short time in relation to the span of pictorial representation. In photography’s infancy, the so-called “pictorialist” photographers were referring directly to painting, a system of representation they were familiar with. That early period seems so fertile with ideas and is still interesting territory to explore, but at the same time we are no longer so naive. Obviously, photography has totally diversified—it’s everywhere at once. I suppose I want to deal with photography’s role as a system among many others. But I don’t think we are at any end point, quite the contrary: we are only contributing to the medium’s language and long history.

—

Adam O’Reilly is the Online Editor at Aperture Magazine.

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2014 Guggenheim Fellows Announced

LaToya Ruby Frazier, Momme, from the series Notion of Family, 2008

Matthew Pillsbury, Tanya and Taj, CSI Miami, November 25th 2002 10-11pm, from the series Screen Lives

Cover, The Photographer’s Playbook: 307 Assignments and Ideas, edited by Jason Fulford and Gregory Halpern

From This Equals That, by Jason Fulford and Tamara Shopsin.

From This Equals That, by Jason Fulford and Tamara Shopsin.

Aperture would like to congratulate all of the recently announced 2014 Guggenheim Fellows! We are especially excited that four of this year’s fellows have recently published or will soon publish books with Aperture: Matthew Pillsbury, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Jason Fulford, and Gregory Halpern.



In Fall 2013, we published Matthew Pillsbury’s first monograph City Stages, and last month exhibited same body of work at the Aperture Gallery.



LaToya Ruby Frazier was a Aperture Foundation Portfolio Prize finalist in 2006, and we will be publishing her first book The Notion of Family in Fall 2014.



In June, we will be releasing The Photographer’s Playbook: 307 Assignments and Ideas edited by Jason Fulford and Gregory Halpern. See more upcoming Aperture titles here.



And in Fall 2014, we will be releasing Aperture’s first photobook for children, This Equals That, by Jason Fulford and Tamara Shopsin.

—

City StagesMatthew Pillsbury’s first monograph City Stages captures the vibrancy of urban landscapes in large-format, black-and-white photographs.




$65.00

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After Monet’s Garden

Aperture spoke with Miranda Lichtenstein about her upcoming exhibit of Polaroids on view at the Gallery at Hermès, April 11–May 5, 2014

Miranda Lichtenstein, Steep Rock #2, 2006

Miranda Lichtenstein, Untitled #15 , 2002-2005

Miranda Lichtenstein, Ito #5 , 2008-2009

Starting tomorrow, April 11, Miranda Lichtenstein presents a career-spanning exhibit of her Polaroids at the Gallery at Hermès. Culled from eleven years of residencies all over the world, Lichtenstein’s photographs in the show are reflective of her surroundings, capturing the light and shadows of each locale using the serialized format of the Polaroid camera. Aperture caught up with the artist to discuss the editing process, and the self-discovery that resulted from considering a decade’s worth of images.

Aperture: How did this exhibition and collaboration with Hermès begin?

Miranda Lichtenstein: The exhibition was put together by Cory Jacobs, whom I’ve know for years. I had been to a number of the shows she has curated at the Hermès gallery. She approached me about doing a show a year ago; she had seen some of my Polaroids at the Hammer Museum in 2006. I thought Cory’s idea to look back at my Polaroid work over the past eleven years would be a great opportunity, and I was also interested to show in a space that is dedicated to photography, a new context for me. We decided that I would go through my work from the very beginning, when I first start shooting with a 4-by-5 Polaroid back, up until the present.

A: What prompted you to first use the Polaroid camera in your work?

ML: It began with a residency at Giverny, which was the first time I shot 4-by-5 film. Roe Ethridge gave me his 4-by-5 with a Polaroid back to take with me to France. I shot with that to learn how to shoot 4-by-5 film, as a test. The more I shot,the more I became interested in considering the Polaroid as the final object.

A: This exhibit is a departure from the non-indexical photographs you made for last solo exhibit at Elizabeth Dee in 2010. How do the Polaroids in this show relate to the rest of your work?

ML: There are a few images in the show that are Polaroid versions of the suites I showed at Elizabeth’s. However, that exhibition does differ; it was a great mix of scale and genre. I was exploring different strategies of image making, which involved distorting or refracting the images. I would say that approach is in play now as well; all the images deal with shadow play, refracted light, and elements of misrepresentation.

Miranda Lichtenstein, Civitella #5, 2009

A: The photos in the exhibit are from your travels and residencies over the years—are they a response to those different environments?

ML: Yes, it has a great impact. There is a clearer formal thread as the photographs are all still lifes, but I am definitely responding to the environment. I use the light in each place, and shoot using what’s around me. In Giverny, where the whole project began, I was pulling the clipped plants and flowers the gardeners cut at the end of the day and bringing them into the studio. In Japan, I discovered washi paper, and used it to make the paper screens I shot my compositions through.

A: It must have been a long editing process, going over eleven years of work. What is it like to see all this work in one place?

ML: It’s exciting. When I looked at the work from 2006, I realized both how much it’s had evolved and what consistencies exist throughout. The first Polaroids that I shot in Monet’s Garden were made thinking about how to photograph those ubiquitously photographed things in a different way. The newest works are entirely abstract and don’t deal with place at all in the same way. But it’s been interesting to see how I have worked with light and shadows throughout. I hadn’t considered it all together before. My own trajectory is much more clear to me now.

A: You mentioned there is new work in this show, can you describe it to us?

ML: The new work for the show is made from the screen-shadow photographs that I have been shooting for the past few years. I used the Polaroid to photograph my current digitally shot work, making a one-of-a-kind image of something out of something infinitely reproducible.

-

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Notes on The Next Great Copyright Act

We asked Eugene Mopsik, executive director of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), to provide us with some of his thoughts on The Next Great Copyright Act conference at the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, last weekend. The copyright act in discussion was originally proposed by Maria Pallante, the Register of the U.S. Copyright Office, and calls for a comprehensive revision of U.S. copyright law. The conference brought together scholars, policymakers, and representatives of various stakeholders groups to consider what changes they would propose for the act. Eugene spoke at the event, and we highly recommend reading his talk from the conference here.

“…visual artists, and in particular, photographers are without reasonable remedies for the myriad of infringements occurring every hour, primarily through digital display and transmission. Freelance photographers create the largest numbers of copyrighted works, yet they are the group that is the least able to access the protections theoretically afforded by the Copyright Act. The primary reasons for that inequity are the extremely high cost of federal court litigation; the typically low amounts in controversy, when compared to the costs of litigation; the fact that most freelance professional photographers earn comparatively modest incomes; and the fact that many infringers are aware of this situation and use it to their advantage. These factors coupled with the disruption to business and the emotional stress of litigation are simply more than most sole proprietors can afford.”
—from Eugene Mopsik’s talk at the symposium.

Last week I had the privilege of participating in a symposium on The Next Great Copyright Act. The symposium was a forum for the discussion of changes that might be considered in the current Copyright Act to bring it up-to-date with current, and future practice in the digital space. In attendance on the user side were members of the library, museum, and university communities. On the creator side there were members of the motion picture, music, publishing, and visual arts communities. I was the sole participant from the photography community and I delivered comments on Remedies and Enforcement under the copyright law.

What did I learn? The user community wants information to be free and unfettered, and the creators want reasonable compensation for use. There was lots of discussion around these positions, but this is what it comes down to. Most participants freely acknowledge that visual artists, in particular photographers, are in an unenviable position. Without persistent attribution—attribution that cannot be easily removed from image files—it is next to impossible to track and monetize usage in the digital environment. Identifying information is easily stripped from image files and in fact is done so by default on upload to many platforms. Many people believe that what appears on the Internet is free and available for use—household and commercial. It is very difficult to communicate the value of an image that only exists in digital form having no tangible substance.

Through what other means can rights holders be compensated? The idea of extended collective licensing for secondary usage was discussed, which would require some form of legislation or a consent decree from the justice department. Ultimately it would probably require the ISP’s or platforms such as Google and Pinterest to bear the expense for the display and transmission of the images on their sites and services. A number of trade associations in the imaging space are currently exploring this option. At times it seems as though everyone has figured out how to make money from photographs except for photographers.

It was apparent to me that the prevailing sentiment amongst the user community is that the pendulum has swung too far in favor of the rights holder and that now it is time for the users to assert their rights. Users want an expansion of Fair Use and the elimination or reduction of Statutory Damages. Unfortunately, most images are not registered prior to infringement and therefore are not eligible for statutory damages under any circumstances. If Fair Use continues its expansion through the courts, it will become increasingly difficult for rights holders to create an income stream from their works, and impossible to maintain exclusive licenses and model releases. Who will pay the creators?

There has to be a balance. As always, the “truth” lies somewhere in the middle between the rights of the creators and users. Ultimately creators seek fair and reasonable compensation for the use of their works. By and large, they are not interested in being punitive; they simply want to make a living. As I said in my comments, we need justice, not simply more legislation. Ultimately, it was great to have both sides of the equation in the same room and engaged in civil discourse. The road to a fair and equitable revised Copyright Act will be long and bumpy, but I believe we will get there.

—

Eugene Mopsik is the executive director of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP)

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Call for Entries is Now Closed!

The entry period for the 2014 Aperture Summer Open is now closed! Many thanks to everyone who has submitted work. Be sure to check back soon for more details on selected works, and the upcoming Summer Open exhibition.

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Erik Kessels on Hans Eijkelboom

In anticipation of the PhotoBook Review 006 coming out in late April, we are posting our final dispatch from the PhotoBook Review Issue 005. Under the column “Out of Print SOS!”, Erik Kessels celebrates an early work by Hans Eijeklboom.

One of the most remarkable people I have come to know during the last few years is the Dutch artist and photographer Hans Eijkelboom. People might know his work from the 2007 Aperture book Paris–New York–Shanghai, which contains numerous typologies of people that Eijkelboom photographed in these cities. But there’s much more to Eijkelboom’s work. Since the 1970s he has used photography as a vehicle for his conceptual art. One of my favorite series involves photographs Eijkelboom took in different people’s houses. He rang doorbells in the afternoon, while husbands and fathers were likely absent, still at work. Together with the wife and the children that answered the door, Eijkelboom photographed himself with them, as if he was the head of the household. He did this with several families, and there is no occasion in which he looks out of place. Eijkelboom is a master at exploring and questioning identity.

A similar project from this period is called In de Krant, which translates to Being in the Newspaper. For ten consecutive days Eijkelboom contrived a way to get a picture of himself in the same newspaper. The artist tracked a local press photographer and snuck into the frame whenever he would photograph. We see images of demonstrations, accidents, shop openings, and other locally “interesting” events. Eijkelboom succeeded at his self-appointed task; for this period, you could always find the artist in the background of some newspaper image. It was a performance that was recorded, daily and accidentally, by someone who did not know what was going on.

The newspaper pages with these photographs where brought together in a publication in 1978. Perhaps a few hundred copies were made. A project with such a strong concept and with such a great sense of humor needs to be released again to be seen by a new generation of artists and photographers. It shows that a great idea for a work will always transcend its moment.

—

Erik Kessels is a cofounder and creative director of the communications agency KesselsKramer. He also works as an artist, curator, and publisher in the fields of vernacular and contemporary photography.

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Expanding on Kitsch

Christopher Schreck speaks with Sara Cwynar about her recent exhibition Flat Death at Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, University of the Arts, Philadelphia.

All images courtesy of the artist and Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, University of the Arts, Philadelphia. © Sara Cwynar

All images courtesy of the artist and Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, University of the Arts, Philadelphia. © Sara Cwynar

All images courtesy of the artist and Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, University of the Arts, Philadelphia. © Sara Cwynar

All images courtesy of the artist and Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, University of the Arts, Philadelphia. © Sara Cwynar

All images courtesy of the artist and Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, University of the Arts, Philadelphia. © Sara Cwynar

Blending elements of photography, sculpture, collage, and design, Sara Cwynar’s work explores the processes by which images and objects acquire, change, and lose their meaning over time. In her most recent series, “Flat Death,” the New York—based artist reimagines vernacular images as dense arrangements of found objects. By employing various analog and digital methods of intervention, she produces striking, highly textured imagery that confirms the expressive potential of seemingly archaic materials through the subtle subversion of photographic tropes.



In addition to her recent second monograph, Kitsch Encyclopedia, Cwynar will follow her current exhibition at Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, Philadelphia with her first solo showing in New York. Flat Death will open at Foxy Production on Friday, April 4th.

Christopher Schreck: Until recently, you were a staff graphic designer at the New York Times Magazine, where you produced the same brand of imagery you’re dealing with in your work. How would you say that experience has informed your practice?

Sara Cwynar: Working at the Times was a really formative experience for me. Producing content for commercial and editorial purposes gave me a much better understanding of the way images work, how they’re affected by context and time. Commercial imagery is really about reflecting a particular moment—some images might stand the test of time, but many become dated almost immediately after they’re made. But I also feel like that’s become complicated by the fact that there seems to be a lot of nostalgia in design and photography right now. There’s a lot of combing through image archives for inspiration, talking about how cool and kitschy and funny these old images are to us now. What’s interesting is that people often don’t seem to think about how the images they’re currently making will inevitably share the same fate. It’s something I try to build into my work now. I like the idea of my pictures embracing that process, of retaining this sense of bad taste, while still being contemporary.

CS: It’s interesting, because while it’s a given that commercial images are both driven and ultimately superseded by these cycles of fashion, it seems to me that artworks often function the same way.

SC: Exactly! I’m very interested in the idea that the highly produced art images we see in galleries are subject to the same degradation in value and taste as anything else—that they can become just another item we use and leave behind. It’s something I actively try to build into my images, where they look at first like simple recastings of throwaway imagery, but then, upon closer inspection, reveal themselves as being something else entirely, almost like a trompe l’œil painting.

All the images we make are subject to some sort of change in value and reading as soon as we put them out into the world. It’s really clear when you look at how images circulate online: they enter the stream and end up in unpredictable places. For example, when you see my pictures at reduced sizes on a screen, you really can’t tell what’s going on. They just look like the original, mundane images, so people might not realize they’re really looking at an intricately composed artwork. If you look at how my work has progressed, my images have been getting denser and denser, and that’s in part because I wanted to make them harder to read in passing, online. My earlier “Color Study” pieces flipped around the internet too easily. There was no reason to think you weren’t getting the full experience of the work by viewing it on the computer—which is fine, since not everyone is in New York and can see the works in person. It’s a different way of experiencing the work. It’s hard to get much information out of a 600-pixel-wide jpeg. So in moving forward, I’ve wanted to make sure that what you’re seeing online is not the whole story.

All images courtesy of the artist and Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, University of the Arts, Philadelphia. © Sara Cwynar

CS: You seem to be asserting a more pronounced materiality in this body of work: rather than using straight shots or scans as in previous series, many of these latest images were composed like mosaics, with separate sheets connected with colored tape. In other instances, you’ve layered post-it notes or stickers directly onto the print’s surface before re-photographing it. What led you to experiment with these new techniques?

SC: One of the major themes in my work is this idea of construction, which speaks not only to the way I physically combine objects and rebuild images, but also to how photography uses framing to create narratives, and how we as viewers draw meaning from those narratives. I see these new techniques as a literal way of reinforcing these ideas.

With some of these new pieces, I scan the original found image and use InDesign to make a much larger, segmented version of the file. Once that was printed out and arranged on the studio floor, I then re-build the images with various objects and shoot the piece from above. Working this way, I was able to get much deeper into the details and the tones of the original printed matter.

Incorporating these different techniques further confuses what’s already a complicated viewing experience, where each image initially reads as a kind of collage, but upon closer inspection is revealed to be a photograph of a still-life arrangement, a single image rather than multiple parts. The tiling approach allowed me to introduce another imaging technology into the process: these pictures now go from found pieces of printed matter to digital files, to low-quality laser prints, and back to high-quality analog film negatives before they are finally printed.

CS: As you’re composing these still-life arrangements, are you selecting items thematically? Do you expect your audience to find—or to invent—associations between those particular objects or images?

SC: What ties them together isn’t necessarily their specific content, but rather that they show how content and function can change or be lost over time. I think a lot about how these images were once the height of style, or that these objects once served a particular function. They will inevitably lose their relevance and get left behind, but they never physically go away. They’re still around, clogging up household junk drawers and remaining in our collective psyches, and that’s what I’m looking to as my source material.

I’m working with this huge, democratic archive that’s waiting there to be drawn from, making still-lifes from the debris I’ve collected, and re-presenting it all in a contemporary art context. Having said that, it’s also possible that certain aspects of the content might work its way into my pictures. I am drawn to the modernist idealism you find in mid-century printed matter: this sense of optimism that seems foreign, even naïve to us today. If you look through old issues of Life or National Geographic, it’s palpable, and it really captures something about the culture at that time. The same goes for book covers. I like to think that in reconstructing those images, my work might somehow retain that tone, because the truth is that I love this material. The items may be considered “tasteless,” but they genuinely appeal to my own taste, and I like the idea that by resurrecting them as subjects for art, I’m putting them back in “good taste,” so that others might find value in them again.

All images courtesy of the artist and Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, University of the Arts, Philadelphia. © Sara Cwynar

CS: Your first New York solo show opens at Foxy Production later this week. What can audiences expect from this new set of images?

SC: I really wanted the work in this show to span the tropes of the photographic canon, so I worked with a much broader range of imagery: there are commercial still-lifes, floral arrangements, nature photographs, tourist landmarks, encyclopedia images, printing tests, images from how-to manuals, and, for the first time, portraits. I think it’s a much more comprehensive overview of the medium. I’ve also been experimenting with new ways of approximating the tones of the original printed matter. In the “Display Stand” pictures, for instance, I isolate individual sections of the original image and construct still-lifes of those details using other objects. I then shoot those arrangements, shrink the photos down to 4×6 quick prints, and place them on top of the original image before making the final photograph, combining up to thirty different still-lifes to produce a single work.

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Christopher Schreck is a New York based writer and poet.

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