Category: Photo Nerdiness

Photograph as Object (Getting Grumpy About Hashtags)

Posted on by Bridget

 

 

I am a fan of details. Sometimes this works in my favor. Sometimes this paints me in an unflattering light.

I hear the concerns of artists who state that they don’t want to define themselves, to be hemmed in by an artist statement, or who don’t want to place their artwork in an easily-labeled box. They flirt with various media, accessing one when necessary, avoiding technical control, often on purpose. I am an educator, so I do understand these concerns. I see a place for this handling of media; I know not everyone embraces words. The educator in me can see the tide shifting, and is learning to respond.

But as an artist, I start thinking about the details — my voracious and nerdy satisfaction in learning the steps of a process, the materiality of an artwork, the dance between control and chaos, and how all of that ties to concept. I think about the ways I’ve connected with others through the bantering and bonding over these details. These details require time and effort.

 

I first started noticing something awry with the #chemigram hashtag in early 2022.

I’ve been swimming in the waters of chemigram experimentation for many years now. I’m always interested in seeing who is out there exploring this elusive medium. Seasoned experts, beginning students, and everyone in between – I love discovering what others are finding in this process that continues to provide awe and wonder in my own life.

It started with the lumen prints being tagged as #chemigrams. Then the photograms. Then, basically any traditional silver gelatin print that came out of a darkroom was tagged as a #chemigram. After witnessing this repeatedly, socks started growing over my feet, sandals appeared over them, my fist mechanically arose into the air, the words “get off my lawn” expelled from my frustrated mouth. None of these were examples of chemigrams, dammit.

Around the same time, I started noticing instances of acclaimed photographic artists presenting exhibition works where the medium and process were misrepresented, or side-stepped altogether. A chemigram that was defined as a “digital print”; a pigment-print documentation of lumen that was presented as light-sensitive silver gelatin paper. A complete lack of media definition from a photographic artist – although I’ve never heard of a painter who defined their medium as “painting” — I see this all the time in the photographic world.

As my little pot of obscure anger began to boil over, I transitioned into the question, “why does any of this matter to me?”

Let people mislabel things, Bridget. It doesn’t make anyone evil. So what if a photogram isn’t a chemigram and a “digital print” isn’t even a medium. Your students are going to use that term no matter how many times you basically beg them not to. Let people have nice things. Relax, you jerk.

Ohhhhhhh, but the details.

The details are where we bond, where we argue, where we find our people. The details are where we connect to a shared identity, to people who have struggled over the same process, where we have spent hours or days failing and learning together despite being miles or continents apart. We’ve both been stained by silver nitrate, we’ve both labored in the same dimly-lit room over loud music, we’ve both put in the time.

And I want to see that reflected in the art object you’re presenting to the world.

There are reasons to make pigment prints of your original light-sensitive works, but please call them for what they are. I can appreciate them for what they are.

But personally, if given a choice, I prefer to spend time standing in front of your original light-sensitive print, your unique physical object, and I want to make that connection to YOU – the artist, not the print. I want to look at it and sense that we wrestled with the same problems, we learned together, we were both in awe together. The print before me is evidence to that shared experience.

Epson ink doesn’t exactly convey those emotions to me. (Sorry, Epson.)

And I guess that’s why I get so grumpy with a misused #chemigram hashtag. It’s an implied bond that just misses the mark. It’s the implication that you’ve made an object that has the audacity to take up space in this overly-digitized world, that you’ve danced with the same variables and can connect to that same sense of wonder, just for me to learn that’s not quite true.

 

I’m learning to not get as annoyed as I was upon seeing wild uses of #chemigram. Everyone has to learn. Heaven knows I was a totally ridiculous student. And I do have to accept that some people aren’t as precious about the details. 

But I do hope us photographic artists will all start better-respecting the physicality of the photographic medium. From glass plates, to plastic-coated paper, to electrons, the pendulum has swung and we are back to being object-makers. I hope we can all get better-attuned to appreciating materiality, and celebrating the art object that is the photographic print. Experimental photographic imagery can provide endless “cool” visuals, but I long for the particulars that provide human connection forged through time and commonality. I want to see the print that took this journey with you. Or at least be told if I’m seeing something other than that.

And because of this, sometimes a #chemigram just isn’t a chemigram.

 

The Experimental Photo Festival: Barcelona, Spain

Posted on by Bridget

 

 

I learned of the Experimental Photo Festival in early 2020, and sadly, Covid kept me from traveling to participate in the second iteration of this gathering. Fortunately, Pablo and Laura set up multiple online events throughout that year, that I will forever be grateful for. The fall of 2020 was a particularly difficult time to be an educator in my part of the country, and the Festival’s online panel discussion I participated in was a really bright moment in those dark months. Being unable to safely teach analog photo processes to my students during that time, or even teach them anything in person, my day-to-day life felt like I was living in someone else’s skin. Despite the pandemic abruptly having upended my identity as an educator, the Festival’s online gatherings helped ground me to a community, introducing me not only to new artists, but to students who were looking for guidance. 

So it is with great anticipation that I will finally be traveling to Spain this summer, as an invited instructor and lecturer at the third Experimental Photo Festival, July 20-24th. At this point, I have seen a preliminary program, and I am happily not too sure where I am going to fit in sleep. My beginner workshop “Chemigrams: Light, Chemistry, and the Hand” will cover various methods of applying resists to paper, including drawing, painting, and printmaking techniques. The advanced full-day workshop “Chemigrams: Materiality and Meaning” will present challenges such as working with concept-driven resists, creating three-dimensional works, and collaborative conceptual prompts. I will also be updating my lecture “Painting is Dead, They Said: Analog Photography in Context” to consider all the progress made in the experimental photo world in the last few years. Finally, I will also be offering portfolio reviews to attendees, and looking forward to being a student in a workshop myself. 

The Experimental Photo Festival’s staff consists of many hardworking individuals who are dedicated to equality and transparency. They do not pay for advertising, nor do they receive public/private funding for the festival — it is all generated by conference fees from the attendees. With so many similarities to my years as Director of The Asheville Darkroom, I am honored to participate in this labor of love, and meet artists and educators from across the globe. Registration is open if you happen to find yourself in Spain this summer, or want to make that happen. 

 

Concerning Expectations (The Photo Gods Ain’t Having It)

Posted on by Bridget

 

 

One thing I have learned about chemigrams is that you have to let them become whatever they want to be. If you have expectations, you are likely to be let down. That is where I went wrong with the series Attempt to Minify. Or, I suppose, where I went right, in the end.

I was asked to create a piece for a group exhibition that addresses a chosen fear from each participant. While not my most debilitating, I do have an irrational fear of being in the way of movement. Be it taking up too much room in a grocery store with a cart, or going too slow in left lane traffic, I am overcome with anxiety in these situations and have to move as soon as possible. The piece I created (eventually named “Obstruophobia”) has a focal point of chemigram that visually embodies the action of trying to make myself smaller to avoid obstructing movement.

The problem became how to choose a chemigram resist that would create a tree-ring effect that symbolized my desire to become smaller and smaller, enclosing myself into a ridiculously tiny space, with a suffocatingly tight pattern of line. I thought I knew what to use based on past experience, but I was wrong. And my next resist choice after that was wrong. And so on.

My journey of stumbling and failing landed me with this series – a collection of 4” squares that explore a variety of resists that should have given me the precision I wanted in order to conceptualize my idea, although none of them really did it with total success. Again, it’s my fault for expecting a chemigram to become anything more than what it wanted to be. But the results were so almost comically diverse in their textures, lines, shapes, values, and even color, that they got to evolve into their own expression of frustration – how to fail at bending an art medium to your will, and how to find something greater in the ashes of your results.

Lightwork: Exploring Cameraless Photography at Penland

Posted on by Bridget

I’m thrilled to share that I will be returning to Penland School of Crafts in the summer of 2022 as an instructor.

I first visited Penland in 2008, wandering the campus as an applicant for their Core Fellowship. I remember experiencing a sense of quiet and calm on that first visit, and that feeling has never waned. After many visits living in Asheville, after being both an instructor and a student, a walk through campus always feels familiar and comforting, like I have never left. It’s a difficult thing to describe to others, and I hope I will get to share this experience with those new to Penland in a few months. 

“Lightwork: Exploring Cameraless Photography” will cover a variety of processes from both within and outside of the darkroom: lumen prints, cyanotype, chemigrams, cliche-verre, silver gelatin photograms, anthotype, and cyanolumens. So often Photography as a medium is viewed as inexorably tied to a camera, and gear-talk becomes overwhelming. I wanted to spend some time exploring ways that we can work with light-sensitivity alone as a source of inspiration without the middle manager of a lens. This leads to a celebration of physical objects as key to image creation, emphasizing the physicality of the medium, an aspect which is so often overlooked in popular culture.

This workshop takes place for Session 3, June 19 – July 1. Registration is open, and the deadline for scholarships is February 17. Please feel free to reach out if you have questions about the workshop or about Penland.  

Deep Breath Portraits

Posted on by Bridget

 

June 14 – July 31, 2021
On::View Residency, Sulfur Studios, Savannah, GA

I am fortunate to be spending the next month exploring a new body of work that not only satisfies some new technical directions, but helps me conceptually process the last 15 months of these challenging times. Anyone in the Savannah area who would like to be photographed as part of the project can sign up here — my last day for sitters is July 9. Below is my proposal, written on March 20, 2021, explaining my impetus for the project.

“I plan to use this residency as a way to ease back into interaction with the wider public after a year of strict Covid-induced isolation, and to pose questions about trust and welfare within our society. The actions involved in the creation of this work will be just as crucial as the resulting art pieces. The final outcome will be a series of portraits created through the experimental photographic process of chemigrams. I plan to use the space as a photo studio to photograph willing participants as I hold a discussion with them about the ways in which the pandemic has changed their interactions with others.

With my husband being at high risk for complications from Covid-19, we took our last unnecessary foray into public on March 13, 2020. As a social person who charges her batteries by sitting in coffeeshops with her laptop to do work, I feel like a certain part of my brain has had to shut down in order to get through the lack of physical interaction. Another part of my brain has overpowered these needs – what I refer to as “darkroom variable brain” – where I learned how any and every small step of creating a traditional photographic print in a darkroom all factor into its visual outcome. The virus has pushed me into levels of control which I would have mocked over a year ago, as darkroom variable brain now dictates all my possible risks of being in public, and ways that I might be putting my husband and other vulnerable people at risk. Having recently been vaccinated, I can finally see an end to this daily impediment, but I know that I won’t be able to just hop back into public with the flip of a switch and undo the year of conditioning I have placed upon myself to feel physically safe.

As a photographic artist, portraiture has never been a comfortable subject for me. But as I try to crawl out of isolation and force myself into the uncomfortable position of being back in public, no other subject seems more fitting to tackle as I fully push myself out of my comfort zone. As I deal with high levels of mistrust due to peoples’ behavior during the pandemic and their ability to impact the lives of others, I feel I must force myself to hold in-person conversations with others. This is not only to share in and express the trauma we have all experienced, but to record a visual document of my time spent physically among people. To do this I will manipulate the controls of my camera to lengthen to exposure times. Therefore the portraits will not be strict representations of each person’s likeness, but lengthened exposures of multiple seconds resulting in an abstracted likeness of the person. Like many of my collage  pieces which take words, cut the letterforms, and abstract them into a new form to embed the word’s power, in this project I make photographs to embed the passage of time over which the conversation took place, as proof of my own action towards healing. I intend to ask my sitters a series of questions concerning what has changed in their lives over the course of the pandemic, specifically in the realm of their understanding of and trust in others. I hope the conversations may grow organically into whatever topics are comfortable.

The outcome of these prints will not be traditionally-printed photographs, but will take on another level of transformation by using the chemigram process. Chemigrams are silver gelatin (light-sensitive) prints that are made without negatives or a darkroom, but simply by applying various substances (resists) to the paper in order to create imagery akin to drawings or paintings. The paper is processed in traditional developer and fixer chemicals in normal daylight to create a final stable visual outcome. For many years I have been planning to use screenprinting as a method of applying the resist, so that I might return to photographic imagery in my work. Chemigrams are a way to free myself from predictable outcomes in my artwork, given the many variables that can influence how the images take form in terms of their color, value, texture, and line quality. In this case, chemigrams also serve as a way to separate myself further from expectations of portraiture, and perhaps to even touch on my ambiguous feelings about being physically present with my subjects, as I very slowly accept the “new new normal” of being able to be in close interaction with other people again. As I dance with my comfort levels, portraiture is the push and the chemigram process is the pull.”

Adventures in cyanolumens, documentation, and isolation

Posted on by Bridget

 

lumen_header

I had the pleasure of taking a class on Cyanolumens with The School of Light in December. I’ve made lumen prints, I’ve made cyanotypes, but somehow the combination of the two was never something that clicked in my brain. Merging standard silver gelatin with “alt process” seemed enticing. 

We started with some basic lumen prints, where I was able to explore the color palette of a variety of papers. The added blue/green/yellow of cyanotype made for an expanded range of colors depending on which papers I used. The process also allowed me to travel down the rabbit hole of questioning when is photography a document of another object, and when is photography the art itself? As an artist who deals with photographic paper as an object, I had to reconcile the impermanence of the lumen print with its documentation, and allow that to be art itself. I can’t say that I am pleased that the final art object would be an inkjet print, but it is what it is. My eyes saw the finished result — the wild range of colors that rivals a chemigram — and my documentation clings to that reality as best as I could reproduce it, without added drama of contrast or saturation.

These thoughts interestingly coincided with a great conversation I had as part of Cameraless Photography Month with the Experimental Photo Festival in Barcelona, Spain. My breakout room question dealt with what the relationship is between cameraless photography and The Decisive Moment — namely that there seems to be a lack of such moments without the presence of a shutter in the artist’s toolbox. As a chemigam artist, I found myself comparing The Decisive Moment, as Henri Cartier-Bresson might have defined it, to the moment you know a certain resist is about to disappear, and how I can achieve a color or a pattern based on the progression of chemical steps. I have learned to somewhat control the chemigram process to achieve compositional goals. And similarly, the documentation of a lumen print boils down to a particular knowledge of what will happen to a composition given a certain amount of time and exposure to light. I began to understand how a print would change if I didn’t document it immediately, or how the composition might shift in my favor if I waited. 

Subject-matter-wise, I really appreciated the opportunity to be able to scour the grounds of my home and acquire plants as a way to document my immediate environment. This seemed particularly fitting during a pandemic — while we aren’t formally in a lockdown in Georgia, my household basically is, due to pre-existing conditions. The last time I freely left my house without concerns was March 13, 2020. I’ve gone through various waves of acceptance and wanting to jump out of my skin over our isolation. But I felt grateful making these lumens — the fact that I have some land to wander during this isolated time — less than many, but much more than those locked away in apartments in urban centers. I can also be grateful to live somewhere that still has some green in winter, something alive, something growing in the month of December. I was able to harvest a handful of ferns trying to squeeze their way through the cracks of the back deck, my stubborn Mexican Petunias, a yard of clover, various unnamed volunteers, and even one last struggling tomato plant who gave two more fruits before the class concluded. The fact that these objects touched the paper, rather than relying on the intermediary device of a camera, that these plants were dealt the fate of blooming during this incredibly difficult year, make these prints as objects even more precious. Perhaps the fact that the print-objects can only be viewed briefly, under low light, like some of the first photographs ever made, is fitting for the slowing-down of life we’re experiencing at this time. 

18 Years Later

Posted on by Bridget

 

I had the good fortune of teaching in Cortona, Italy, for the University of Georgia for two months this summer. The experience ran the whole gamut of exhilarating to challenging, with some melancholy thrown in. I was a graduate student in 2001 when I first visited Cortona, a handful of months before September 11th, and this was my first time back in 18 years. I had no recollection of many aspects of the town, but sometimes I would take a turn down a small alley and long-forgotten memories would come rushing back.

With all the students cleared out of the darkroom in the last week, I was able to open up the windows and get in one last chemigram session in the Severini darkroom. I had already done some work in the classroom with more readily-available light, but something told me to get into the darkroom proper, to pull open those heavy Italian window shutters. I had been weighing all the possibilities of everything else I should be seeing in Cortona that I had been putting off all summer, but something told me to get to work that day. I was a few hours into my work session when I realized what that voice was about.

The Severini Darkroom was somewhere I never set a foot into as a student in 2001. At the risk of sounding overly-dramatic, I was at war with Photography when I was there. I attended a Printmaking-intensive Maymester in Cortona, as I had found in my first year of grad school that printmakers understood my drive to experiment with process, whereas the realm of Photography was fraught with landmines of “right” and “wrong” practices. I felt relieved to escape its obligations and judgmental glare. Printmakers had no problem calling themselves artists, but photographers were photographers.

For years I have relayed the story of how on my one-day trip to Rome during that month, I didn’t even bring a camera. I think it was a conscious act of defiance, but the details are fuzzy. The huge unexpected takeaway of that day was that being cameraless freed me to truly see my surroundings. I learned the difference between the pictures I take out of tourist obligation and the pictures I choose to bring into existence because I need to. Everyone around me snapped with their point and shoots all the relics they needed to show their friends back home; I found myself falling behind the crowd, lingering, looking. I saw details that I needed to be in person to really absorb — the textures, the craftsmanship, and the incredulous realization of how much more history was present here than in my shallow American existence and own personal family details. I could have long awkward staring sessions with everything — I didn’t feel the pressure to snap my shutter and move right along, as seems to often be the proper response to such experiences. I got to share this story with students of my own this summer, in the very environment which taught me those valuable lessons. And I made sure that they made photos of Rome this summer, about their own experiences there, rather than took them of things they could have just bought postcards of.

So that last week in Cortona, when maybe I should have experienced a dip in the city pool, or taken a hike to Le Celle, I instead started furiously making chemigrams alone in the darkroom, for the last time on July 24th. And partway through, I could sense that the moments making the work were far bigger than the seconds from which they were composed. I felt calm, I felt lucky to be making art right then, right there. In 2001, the darkroom was basically the only method of making photos that had any validity, it was the default. In 2019, being in the darkroom is a conscious choice, and all of the reasons that made me so angry and wanting to avoid the darkroom all came around full circle — here I was making artwork in a place that relied on analog processes to even be possible, in the very place I refused to walk into for all of that frustration with the Photo world. I’m thankful to have been doing this photo thing long enough to have participated in the whole purpose for a darkroom shifting, transforming, and turning into something far more wondrous and exciting than I was even taught that it could be 18 years ago.

Long story short, I think I made peace with the Severini Darkroom that day. We’re good, and I hope we meet again.

 

severini1      sevchemigrams

Silver Gelatin as Alt Process

Posted on by Bridget

 

Chris McCaw

Chris McCaw, “Sunburned GSP #733 (Pacific Ocean),” 2013
Three Unique Gelatin Silver Paper Negatives
10″ × 8″ (25.4 × 20.3 cm) each element

I am teaching Alt Process at Warren Wilson College this semester, and I made it a point to have our first class discussion be defining what Alt Process means. I was pleased that their findings led them to a cross between silver-based and non-silver processes: solarization, bromoil, anthotypes, pinhole images. Their perspective confirmed my feelings that the “traditional” definition of Alt Process, tightly linked to non-silver processes such as cyanotype, or historical processes like salt printing, is outdated and has grown to embrace the traditional darkroom.

Not that this discussion is particularly new. In April 2015, Dan Estabrook organized a panel discussion at Penland School of Crafts with Christina Z Anderson, Jerry Spagnoli, France Scully Osterman, and other participants to discuss the current state of, shall we say, chemical photography. We recognized the fad of Alt Process work and how it is frequently used as a crutch to skirt around concept or even technical mastery. We also debated just what is the proper term to encompass these processes, since”Alt Process” at one point meant an alternative to the gelatin silver prints of the traditional darkroom. The darkroom is itself an Alt Process to the mainstream of digital now.

There is simply so much to explore with developer, stop, fix, and silver. No one would consider Chris McCaw’s “Sunburn” series traditional in any way, yet it is achieved with basic silver paper negatives. Alison Rossiter explores non-objective form with decades-old expired and rare papers to which she simply applies chemicals, bypassing negative-based imagery altogether. Even the once most widespread commercial-based form of photographic imagery, the c-print, is harnessed by Marco Breuer to merge photographic materials in with concerns about drawing and physical manipulation. In short, I don’t think we need a brush and a UV lightbox to create imagery with any sort of label of “alternative”.

I am pleased that I have been given an opportunity to explore these ideas further with students in an upcoming class at Penland: Gelatin Silver as Alt Process. Running from July 10-22, we will explore ways to make photographic art with traditional darkroom chemistry. The methods are geared towards darkroom beginners: composite printing, solarization, selective development, paper negative manipulation, chromoskedasic sabattier. I am also looking forward to introducing chemigrams into the mix, introducing the techniques from my Language Acquisition series. Registration for the workshop is open, and the deadline for the Scholarship Application is February 17th.

I feel lucky to be a photographic artist at this time in history. There is so much to be redefined and rediscovered.

 

The darkroom: transcending “romantic”

Posted on by Bridget

 

darkroom

When I had my tintype portrait made last summer by Giles Clement, I began to follow him on Instagram. This sounds funny to say now, but at first, I couldn’t figure out why so many people in his images were dressed so similarly. And then comments would arise here and there along the lines of: “oh, it would have been a better photo of me if I hadn’t been wearing that t-shirt, it doesn’t look old-timey enough…” or “I shouldn’t have smiled.” And the like. And then I got it — most people view a tintype photo as a more expensive version of your Old West dress-up sepia photograph that you got made on your family vacation. I’m so naively nerdy that I didn’t think beyond the unique object, laborious chemical process, and distinct value range.

Which leads me to say that I am pretty sure that I am looking forward to the time when analog photographic processes are no longer deemed romantic.

I think the assumption is we must do these processes because we love history and all things old. Because things were “so much simpler in the past.” Or maybe we are just too stubborn to embrace new technologies. Surely we will come around and get with it at some point, but isn’t our denial quaint?

I look forward to the time when people will view the darkroom as yet another tool at the artist’s disposal.

And I do understand why this is difficult for the general public to understand… because photography is a technological medium, not an artist’s medium, right? Where is the art in pressing that shutter release button? So why would you choose to practice a technology that takes more time, effort, and money than the current one does? The reason is: we are not using photography as a technology.

Romantic thoughts arise when we feel something has been replaced or forgotten. It’s apt for commercial photographers to have such feelings about the darkroom. But many of us artists over here never left. It’s the workspace where we get our art job done.

How many artists working in woodcut are mocked for not throwing out their carving tools for Photoshop? It would make sense, right? Why would you spend hours carving a block of wood, inking it up, making multiple prints that are no good, that you have to throw away, before arriving at a few that do look good? To my knowledge, that’s not happening because we are so incredibly far-removed from the time when woodcuts were considered technology. Is it possible for photography to achieve that status in our lifetimes?

If there are large groups of people trying to shame printmakers into making art on a computer screen, I’d be really curious to hear that perspective. For now, I am concluding that only analog photographic artists have to endure such pressure among the contemporary art mediums. But for how much longer? When does this become an accepted medium, not novel, or “going against the grain”, or something to get wistful over?

And what will the photographic art landscape begin to look like when that happens?

How big is your lens?

Posted on by Bridget

 

lens

Have you ever witnessed a conversation between two painters passionately debating the pros and cons of their paintbrushes?

Honestly, I bet it has happened sometime, somewhere in history. But why is this gear-talk so much more prevalent of a stereotype with photographers? Is the circle of people arguing natural vs. synthetic brushes just so small and esoteric that I am ignorant to it, or am I right that the cries of Nikon vs. Canon are that much louder?

Don’t get me wrong, I like to learn about camera technology — I feel it is important to my medium. There are cameras I wouldn’t mind owning, like a Mamiya C330, some lenses that I wouldn’t mind having for my DSLR. But that is hardly central to any conversation I want to have about the medium. You can hear the itch in the ravenous photographer’s voice when he asks: what was the focal length of the lens you used? What’s the widest aperture on that lens? Did you use Vibration Reduction? And on and on. If I am in critique, and one of these details is necessary to know because it reflects something conceptual or compositional about the outcome of an image, then I will ask. But I really don’t feel the need to discuss these points as conversation topics over drinks.

Yet it seems as a photographic artist, by extension, I am supposed to be inherently and primarily concerned about all these technical details. Case in point: some colleagues of mine recently witnessed me taking a quick photo of something whose destination was a Facebook page. They both laughed quite a bit when I used my iPhone to take the picture. I didn’t understand why. When I asked them to explain what was so funny, they said, “The photography teacher is using an iPhone.”

On one level, I can step back and see that as amusing, and I wasn’t offended in any way (nor did I have reason to be). But I also don’t assume the drawing teacher will be jotting down all class notes in silverpoint. Or that the painting teacher will use oil paint for grading slips. Nothing in the photograph required the larger sensor of my DSLR to render the aperture with a blurrier depth of field over what my iPhone provides, nor did I need the higher amount of megapixels of my DSLR to make a large print of the image. It’s simply a technology that allowed me to quickly upload a snapshot to a social media platform — that was the goal.

Thus comes in that very understandable confusion of photography as a technology vs. as an art medium. I would never allow my students to use a cell phone in my photography classes. The context of my class is to learn the tools available on a DSLR camera to make meaningful expressions. The context of an iPhone is primarily a technological tool (making art with an iPhone is not off the table but not really part of my discussion here).

So my mind drifts to the person who feels they need to pick up their DSLR over their phone to make this very simple shot for the web. Is the intent to make a piece of art, that will then happen to be showcased on the web? By all means then, go for it. But for our day-to-day shots, do we really need a $1000 lens to document what’s for breakfast? I can’t help but feel there is something inherently braggart and secretly insecure about doing this. Just because you have the technology/knowledge to do this task “better” than most of the general public, does it mean you have to use it every single time? Can we just let context inform our choices, not simply the gear we have access to?

Because context is why it seems funny for someone to pick up a paintbrush to write a note to their dean. Why are camera-based people held to different standards? When I say some of my students have better cameras than me, a lot of people laugh, but it’s true. My camera does exactly what I need it to for the type of art I make. I don’t need a full frame sensor and three different lenses. If I were a wedding photographer, that would probably be different.

Context.

So of course it boils down to that joke about the photographer who goes to a dinner party. He meets the host, who says, “I love your photographs, you must have an amazing camera.” Later at dinner, the host serves the meal, and after eating, the photographer says to the host, “I love your food, you must have an amazing oven.”

When was the last time you looked at a painting and all you wanted to discuss was whether they used a round sable brush?

Yet again, why I am hesitant to call myself a “photographer” sometimes. The fact that I use a camera doesn’t make me a gear-head, and I look forward to the day when that presumption fades.

Photograph as consumerist act

Posted on by Bridget

 

no_photography

 

I used to get offended when I would find calls for art shows that would appeal to “artists and photographers”. As though the two were mutually exclusive. However, in the last few years, I find myself shying away from the term “photographer”, as an unexpected sympathy towards this distinction which I shunned in years past has surfaced. I now instead refer to myself as a “photographic artist”.

I use the term because I am describing the tool with which I choose to use to make art. Painters and sculptors do not have to explain themselves. No one in my city introduces themselves as a painter and is then asked “what kind of houses do you paint?”. Yet if I were to call myself a photographer, I am asked whether I would shoot someone’s engagement photos. The word association goes straight to the commercial aspect of the profession, not the artistic medium. And I am empathetic as to why — I do understand most people use photography for its practical purposes and not its expressive ones.

I am not attempting to construct a hierarchy by separating commercial from art photography. But what I have developed a sensitivity to is that the term “photographer” lends towards the act of taking rather than making. It appeals to those who believe they have to travel to some exotic location to make good images, those who need to be directed on what to shoot in expensive workshop outings, who want to talk about their lenses until they are blue in the face. They have to capture. They need a portfolio of items to collect and claim as their own: the peak fall foliage, the swaddled baby with the angelic expression, the skillfully HDR’ed sunset, the tasteful black-and-white nude.

In short, photographers, by my definition of the word, go out into the world and take images of that which they think strikes others, who may possibly pay for said images. Photographers are not fueled by personal meaning, and then explore how a camera may or may not be able to embody that meaning. That is what photographic artists do. They are curious, and they experiment. Photographic artists are not obsessed with pinning down every possible variable imaginable in order to achieve success in their pre-determined vision. They celebrate mistakes and their potential, they embrace process.

The digital photography revolution was the blessing of the photographic artist. It freed the photographers from their unwanted labor of the darkroom, and allowed them what they really find joy in — shooting — more more and more. No more film to inhibit the photographer, simply make more images and hand the card off to someone else to print from — or not. A computer screen might just suffice. This isn’t to say that photographic artists must work in darkrooms. But I can attest to the fact that 0% of the people who work in my darkroom are trying to meet a newspaper deadline, and pretty much 100% are there in the spirit of discovery.

A photographic artist is concerned with the final physical object. Even a 2D artist is still making an object. It could be pigment on inkjet paper — but the photographic artist still wants to know what ink and what paper. The image capture is, at best, half of the journey.

Yet…

Were Henri Cartier-Bresson a young photography student today, I feel he would choose to shoot digital. It pains me a little to say that with my traditionalist tendencies, but I know it’s true. “The photograph itself does not concern me. What I want is to capture a minute part of reality,” said Cartier-Bresson. He didn’t care to print his own photos, he just wanted another roll of film so he could get back out into the world. But I get giddy when I have the opportunity to flip through a book of his images. The ambiguity of the moments he captured created images that have kept me thinking for years, kept me revising my thoughts and interpretations of his compositions. Some are awkward in their subject, unlikely in their configuration, or even — gasp — undesirable to hang over a couch.

He created for himself. And he didn’t have a checklist of items to capture, to consume, to piss on and claim “mine”. He wandered into the world, sharpened his intuition, and learned to press the button at the perfect moment when the compositional stars aligned before him. He may not have cared to make his own prints, but he honed a skill that was not born of any consumerist practice of photography.

The consumer knows what he wants to buy, and when his product doesn’t arrive in the format he anticipated, he gets angry, he complains, maybe he even sues. He doesn’t play with the circumstances of what mistakes could beget. He thrives on the accuracy and promises of the latest technology.

The artist knows technology is a waste without a message, or worse, that technology is an embarrassing excuse to get out of needing one.

 

Photograph as event

Posted on by Bridget

 

tintype

This weekend, I had my portrait taken by tintype photographer Giles Clement, an event hosted by Old North clothing store downtown. I really wasn’t sure if I was going to have it done when I arrived, I really wanted to just bask in the photo nerdiness, and support a pop-up darkroom with an historic process being practiced in my own town. At first I couldn’t figure out why I should get a photo of myself made. It’s not like I’m going to put a picture of myself on the wall in my home.

It’s really not a flattering photo at all. Aside from the fact that I look like I just murdered someone (“#stonecoldbridget” was my favorite response thus far), large format photography spares no detail of my aging complexion, and the angle just seems to emphasize where I’ve stowed away all that craft beer over the last few years. But here’s the thing — I love this image.

And I’m trying to figure out why. I’m trying to figure out if it’s the same reason that the Facebook likes are piling up — which I think has to do with the fact that it looks “old-tmey”. In talking to Giles about it, he said people ask him if he lives his life in other “antiquated” ways to match his tintype process, to which he said no. That was also an amusing statement to me…. it never occurred to me that someone would assume Giles would be pickling all his home-grown vegetables and making his own soap just because he makes tintypes. I guess that’s the photo dork in me talking.

So is it really the lack of highlights in this image that makes people think of the Old West and get tickled? Is it the subconscious detection of minute detail afforded by a 4×5 negative which digital photography can’t yet replicate?

Later that evening, I debated with a friend the importance of having this image made by someone else. As much as this has piqued my interest in learning tintype photography for myself, that is an apples and oranges sort of experience compared to having someone create this photo.  I think the reasons I decided to go with it are twofold.

One is the importance of the tintype object. It is a freaking photograph on a metal plate, a suspension of collodion and silver nitrate that presents grayscale values which people psychologically equate to me. How many of us are satisfied on a daily basis with seeing images on a computer screen? One woman waiting to be photographed said, “I know I will want to have this when I am old.” She’s talking about the object in addition to the image it holds. She’s not fantasizing about gazing upon Facebook or whatever will exist in 50 years.

The other factor of importance was the actual event of being photographed. Why did I put my name on a list and wait an hour and a half? Why was I fussing so much over my hair? How many times are we photographed on a daily basis now and don’t give a shit — I could have completely filled up my phone with selfies for the time it took anticipating this one shot. The truth is that I kind of liked being nervous to have this one image made. I don’t just get to delete it and try again. I have to do it right, and maybe that pressure is enticing in these times.

Giles even offered to let me do another one since I looked so damn angry. Which I debated momentarily. All throughout my life however, strangers have approached me on the street and asked me to “just smile.” I’m really quite happy on the inside I would say 95% of the time, I guess I tend to suffer from the condition of “Resting Sad Face”. So in that sense, I decided to stick with this photo, accepting that it best reflected my most common reality. And here I had given up on the belief that any form of photography could still convey truth. I’m pleased to be wrong.