Modern Alchemy: Experiments in Photography Illustrated Checklist

Transcription

Modern Alchemy: Experiments in Photography
Illustrated Checklist
(alphabetical by artist’s last name)
December 6, 2014 --- March 15, 2015
Bill Armstrong (American, b. 1952)
Untitled (Film Noir #1437), 2012
Type-C print, 24 x 20 in.
Courtesy of the artist and ClampArt,
New York City
Bill Armstrong is interested in visual perception and
his work explores how the eye reconciles visual
information. Untitled (Film Noir #1437) belongs to his
extensive Infinity series, in which the artist uses an
extreme out-of-focus range to create figurative, yet
abstract images steeped in color. He begins with a
collage created from appropriated images that he
has transformed in a variety of ways by
photocopying, painting, and cutting. He adds colored
foregrounds and backgrounds and, setting his
camera’s focus to infinity, photographs the collage
as a close-up. The edges of the individual elements
become blurred, dematerializing the figures and
creating “rhapsodies of color,” in the words of the
artist, that evoke hazy memories or vague dreams.
While the Infinity series comprises several discrete
portfolios, the Film Noir photographs refer to classic
black-and-white films from the 1940s and 50s.
These works address themes of loneliness and
alienation by depicting an indistinct solitary figure
against an equally amorphous background, evoking
the moral dilemmas of film noir characters, as well
as of modern man.
Damion Berger (British, b. 1978)
Fiac I, Jardin des Tuileries, Paris 2009 (from
the Black Powder series)
Pigment ink print on Baryta paper, Diasec
mounted in artist’s frame, 159 x 201 cm
Lent by the Artist
Fiac I, Jardin de Tuileries belongs to Damion
Berger’s Black Powder series, which records the
spectacle of pyrotechnic celebrations in locations
around the world. In this work, the overlapping
vectors chart the trajectories of fireworks during a
performance in Paris.
To achieve the heavily
demarcated lines, Berger uses a large-format
camera with the lens stopped down to its smallest
aperature, f/64. Long and overlapping exposures
timed in sync with each explosion record the paths
of multiple bursts on a single negative. Berger then
prints in the negative to reverse the black and white
areas and enhance the tonal scale. While his
method is controlled, his images depend on the
The Heckscher Museum of Art
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Education Department
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This illustrated checklist for the exhibition Modern
Alchemy: Experiments in Photography is to be used for
educational purposes in coordination with the high
school student exhibition Long Island’s Best: Young
Artists at The Heckscher Museum 2015.
unpredictable nature of the subject. In some of the
more abstract works, such as Untitled X (seen
elsewhere in this gallery), Berger readjusts the focus
of the camera between exposures, deliberately
shooting out-of-focus images that capture, in his
own words, “analogue artifacts sculpted by the
mechanics of the lens and shaped by the
arrangement of the shutter blades.”
Berger’s interest in plotting the paths of these
explosions relates to photography’s perpetual
fascination with the documentation of motion, seen
in the work of 19th century photographers like
Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey, who
spent much of their careers studying animal and
human locomotion. Unlike Muybridge and Marey,
however, Berger captures multiple phases of
movement on a single frame, more akin to some of
the motion studies by Thomas Eakins that captured
multiple phases of movement in a single image.
Damion Berger (British, b. 1978)
Untitled X, 2010
Pigment ink print on Baryta paper, Diasec
mounted in artists frame, 135 x 168 cm
Lent by the Artist
Théodore Brauner (Romanian, 1914-2000)
Untitled ("Solarfix"), ca. 1950
Chemically-enhanced vintage gelatin silver
print affixed to original mount
25-1/4 x 19-1/2 in.
Ubu Gallery & Janos Gat Gallery, New York
Théodore Brauner was a self-taught photographer.
His family moved from Vienna to Bucharest when he
was only one, and from a young age he was
haunted by “a black and white imprint in [his] inner
image,” which he later attempted to reconcile
through photography.
Around 1934, solarfixes became Brauner’s primary
means of expression as he moved toward a lensless
practice of capturing light. Like the cyanotype
process invented in 1842 by chemist and
astronomer John Herschel, a solarfix relies on the
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exposure to direct sunlight of a chemically soaked,
light sensitive paper. To create a solarfix, Brauner
coated his paper with a mix of chemicals (the details
of which are unknown), dried it, and then placed it in
the sun, obtaining organic forms that are virtually
painted by the atmosphere, unlike the defined
shades and shapes in a photogram.
Like a traditional alchemist, Brauner was interested
in both the animate and inanimate and much of his
photographic career can be interpreted as an
attempt to reconcile the two. His father’s interest in
Theosophy and his brother’s, and eventually his
own, penchant for Surrealism, undoubtedly
influenced his psychic inclination. Theosophy was a
popular 19th century philosophy that experienced a
resurgence in Western European thought in the
early 20th century. It propounded the belief that
God’s omnipresence can only be known through
mystical experiences. Brauner’s solarfixes can be
seen as an attempt to connect with an elemental
spirit through the chance meeting of nature and the
unconscious.
Josef Breitenbach (American, b. Germany,
1896-1984)
Huntsman's Luck, New York, c. 1946-49
Vintage gelatin silver print, 13-3/4 x 10-7/8 in.
© Josef and Yaye Breitenbach Foundation,
Courtesy Gitterman Gallery
Josef Breitenbach began his career as a portrait
photographer and worked with traditional and
experimental processes throughout his life. His
family instilled in him a profound respect for the
history of art and culture, and his work reveals his
appreciation for many artistic styles, including
Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. Fleeing
World War II, Breitenbach immigrated to New York
in 1942. At the invitation of Josef Albers, he taught
photography at the progressive Black Mountain
College in North Carolina and later joined the faculty
at Cooper Union and The New School in New York.
Breitenbach
explored
various
experimental
processes, including photograms, solarization, and
combination printing, as well as chemical
experimentation with bleaching, toning, and
pigments, as seen in Huntsman’s Luck, New York
and Fall.
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Josef Breitenbach (American, b. Germany,
1896-1984)
Fall, c. 1946-49
Vintage toned and colored gelatin silver print
13-5/8 x 10-5/8 in. (34.61 x 26.99 cm)
© Josef and Yaye Breitenbach Foundation,
Marco Breuer (German, b. 1966)
Untitled (C-1097), 2011
Chromogenic paper, scratched,
23-1/4 x 19-9/16 in.
Collection of Peter J. Cohen
Rigorously trained in the science of photographic
materials and processes, Marco Breuer’s practice
centers on image-making as a direct interaction with
the photographic paper itself. Eschewing camera,
lens, and negative, Breuer exposes light-sensitive
paper to full-spectrum light and abrades its surface
in various ways – scratching, scraping, sanding, and
burning it. The abstract compositions created rely on
the revelation of layers of color within the emulsion.
Breuer’s interest in the material essence of the
photograph asserts the primacy of the object itself.
Its subject is self-referential; determined by the
nature of the photographic paper, the image is a
record of Breuer’s performance to create it.
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Dan Burkholder (American, b. 1950)
Overlapping Trees, Palenville, 2009
Platinum/palladium on vellum
over gold leaf print,
5-3/4 x 4-1/2 in.
Lent by the Artist
Dan Burkholder was one of the earliest
photographers to work with digital technologies and
his images represent a marriage of digital and
traditional processes. In 1992, he developed a digital
negative technique to create traditional black-andwhite prints. In Overlapping Trees, Palenville,
Burkholder uses the historic platinum/palladium
process to print on vellum, a translucent parchmentlike paper. Gold leaf is then painted onto the back of
the photograph, toning the image as it shines
through the paper. The gold leaf adds depth and an
ethereal glow unattainable in the gray scale usually
associated with black-and-white printing. The soft
focus obtained by the use of vellum and gold leaf
recalls the painterly aspects of Pictorialist
photographs by artists like Edward Steichen and
Alfred Stieglitz in the late 19th century.
Passing Sheep, Tuscany, Rowboat on Lake, Central
Park, and Hay Bales, Tuscany are iPhone capture
images manipulated using a variety of common
imaging apps. For Burkholder, iPhone technology
places the camera and darkroom into the palm of
one’s hands.
Rowboat on Lake, Central Park, 2013
Archival pigment print on varnished vellum
over gesso print, iPhone capture, 5 x 5 in.
Lent by the Artist
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Passing Sheep, Tuscany, 2013
Archival pigment print on varnished vellum over
gesso print, iPhone capture, 4 x 5-1/2 in.
Lent by the Artist
Hay Bales, Tuscany, 2013
Archival pigment print on varnished vellum over
gesso print, iPhone capture, 5 x 5 in.
Lent by the Artist
Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Chicago, 1946 (printed c. 1980)
Dye transfer print
15 x 19-5/8 in. (38.1 x 49.85 cm)
Courtesy of Bruce Silverstein Gallery,
New York
Harry Callahan was a self-taught photographer
whose work focused on landscapes, street scenes,
and portraiture.
Among the most influential
American photographers of the post-war period, he
began teaching at the Institute of Design in Chicago
in 1946. The Institute’s experimental approach
helped Callahan form his own aesthetic. His work
explored the abstract forms in nature, and he is
credited with introducing formal abstraction to
photography. Chicago, created during his first year
at the Institute of Design, belongs to a group of
experimental works that capture the path of
flashlight in a dark room, evoking photography’s
essence as images drawn with light.
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Ellen Carey (American, b. 1952)
Pull & Rollback with Mixed Pods, 2011
Polaroid 20x24 color positive print – unique,
68 x 22 in.
Collection of David Evangelista (New York,
NY); Courtesy of Jayne H. Baum Gallery
(New York, NY)
For over 30 years, Ellen Carey’s work has centered
on an exploration of light, color, and process. In
1996, she began creating Polaroid “pulls,” in which
color-filled parabolas are created using a large
format, 20x24 (inch) Polaroid camera. In these
works, the film is exposed to colored light and
literally pulled through the camera’s rollers beyond
the usual 24 inches. The color dyes combine during
this process creating unique hues in shapes
determined by the placement of the pods and the
action of the pull. Later, Carey began adding a
“rollback,” in which she rotated the paper, re-loaded
it onto the spool, exposed it, and again pulled it
through the rollers, producing unanticipated shapes,
colors and striations.
First developed in 1976, the 20x24 Polaroid camera
allowed photographers to create instant large-scale
photographs that did not require traditional darkroom
processing. Rolls of negative film and positive paper
are loaded into the camera with pods containing
color that is released through the action of pulling
the negative film and positive paper through the
camera together, similar to the mechanical process
of the smaller hand-held instant cameras first
developed by Edwin Land in 1948. Carey’s work
speaks to fascination with the Polaroid process in
the 1970s among artists like William Wegman,
Chuck Close, and Robert Rauschenberg. While
their work relied on representational images, Carey’s
subject is the chemical and mechanical workings of
the camera itself. In her pulls and rollbacks, process
and color function as both subject and object.
Joe Constantino (American, b. 1931)
Brooklyn Bridge with Hot Dog Stand, 2012
Solarized digital print, 13 x 19 in.
Gift of the Artist.
Initially trained as a musician, Joe Constantino first
became interested in photography while traveling in
Europe. His earliest work was in sports photography
and he later turned to nature and fine art subjects.
Since the early 1970s, Constantino has devoted his
attention to working in black- and-white. He first
explored the possibilities offered by infrared
photography, in which reversals of light and dark
and heightened detail produce images of a
dreamlike world.
In his more recent work,
Constantino experiments with solarized imagery.
Traditionally occurring by accident when a negative
or print was exposed to light during darkroom
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processing, solarization reverses the tones in a
photograph so that light areas appear dark and dark
areas appear light. The technique was exploited for
its aesthetic merits by Man Ray in the 1930s,
although Constantino produces his solarized images
through Photoshop, transforming a digital image to
monochrome and then reversing its tonality. While
the subject of Brooklyn Bridge with Hot Dog Stand is
a familiar New York street scene, the reversal of
tones creates a surreal image beyond ordinary
vision.
Kevin Cooley (American, b.1975)
Moon Traveler 1, 2013
Chromogenic print (photogram), 60 x 40 in.
© Kevin Cooley. Courtesy Kopeikin Gallery
Los Angeles based artist, Kevin Cooley, is
engrossed with the intersection between chaos and
control, which he explores in various media,
including photography, video, and installation art. In
much of his photography, he focuses on the theme
of light in nature. Moon Traveler 1 documents the
explosion of a firework on a sheet of photographic
paper, the explosion itself providing the light that
exposes the image as the firework trails away. Like
Melissa Fleming, Klea McKenna, and Floris
Neusüss (seen elsewhere in the exhibition), Cooley
creates this photogram outside of the darkroom,
capturing an unplanned, abstracted view of a natural
process.
Pierre Cordier (Belgian, b. 1933)
& Gundi Falk (Austrian, b. 1966)
Chemigram 18/6/13 "Pair-Impair", 2013
Chemigram on paper, 19-3/4 x 19-3/4 in.
Von Lintel Gallery, Los Angeles and the Artist
When asked where he lies on the spectrum of art
history, Pierre Cordier replied, “I’m neither a painter
nor a photographer, but a little of each.” Invented in
1956 by Cordier, the chemigram is a hybrid of these
two mediums, a photograph made with neither a
camera nor a negative, but directly on the
photographic paper itself.
Chemigram 18/6/13 "Pair-Impair" was made with the
Austrian painter and artist Gundi Falk, with whom
Cordier began to collaborate in 2011. When creating
a chemigram, the artists work with light sensitive
paper in broad daylight. The sheet is covered with
various resists, such as varnish, wax, syrup, or
honey. Each resist produces a different texture.
Varnish and wax, the harder resists, produce
sharper images, while syrup and honey produce
softer, less distinct forms. The paper is incised with
various shapes and then soaked alternatively in
developer and fixer, two chemical baths found in the
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traditional film darkroom. These alternate soaks
cause physical transformations and chemical
reactions between the resists, the light, and the
chemicals, creating a complex image of nuanced
detail.
Melissa Fleming (American, b. 1975)
Sea Change 4, 2006
Unique palladium photogram, 11 x 14 in.
Lent by the Artist
Melissa Fleming describes herself as an artist “who
is interested in the duality of the visible and invisible,
the relationship between realism and abstraction,
and the interplay between art and science.” She is
fascinated by nature, especially its transient and
unseen aspects. In her Sea Change series, Fleming
uses a photogram technique to explore the everchanging ocean. Holding light sensitive paper in the
break of a wave, she allows sand, algae, and
sediment to wash over the paper and settle into a
pattern as it simultaneously exposes in the sunlight.
The abstract photogram created records the
movement of organic materials within an individual
wave, while the images within the series as a whole
vary from wave to wave, reflecting both the infinite
diversity in nature and its eternal rhythms. Although
a microcosm, they often reflect the macrocosm of
the natural world.
Adam Fuss (American/British, b. 1961)
Untitled, 1994
Unique Cibachrome photogram, 14 x 11 in.
Adam Fuss has returned to photography’s origins in
his exploration of the pinhole camera and the
cameraless photogram. This color photogram
belongs to a series of biological studies in which the
artist investigates the nature of light. Exposing the
calla lilies on top of light-sensitive paper produced
gradations of color dependent on the translucence of
the petals. The series evokes William Henry Fox
Talbot’s black and white photograms of botanical
specimens, dating as early as 1839, although Fox
Talbot’s intent was scientific documentation, while
Fuss is more concerned with the nature of the
process itself. In later works, his exploration of light
and chemistry becomes more physical, as his
selection of objects is based upon their direct
chemical interaction with the dye layers in the paper.
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Robert Heinecken (American, 1931-2006)
PP/Surrealism-C, 1990
Dye bleach print photogram from
magazine page
14 x 11 in. (35.6 x 27.9 cm)
Courtesy of The Robert Heinecken Trust,
Chicago and Petzel Gallery, New York
Robert Heinecken described himself as a “paraphotographer”—someone who operates beside or
beyond traditional photography. He pushed the
boundaries between photography and other fine arts
mediums, incorporating photographic processes and
materials into painting, sculpture, printmaking, and
installations. He was obsessed with the effects of
popular culture on society and American attitudes
towards gender, sex, and violence. His work also
explores the relationship between the original and
the copy in our ever-growing technological age, and
he often appropriated images from magazines,
packaging, and television.
In PP/Surrealism-C, Heinecken created a photogram
that superimposed the front and back of a page from
a magazine, a technique he had previously explored
in black and white in his Are You Rea series (196468) and in color in the Recto/Verso series (late
1980s). In these photograms, surreal juxtapositions
emerge
that
highlight
American
vanity,
consumerism, and superficiality.
A dedicated teacher, Heinecken established the
graduate photography program at UCLA in 1964. In
the essay “I Am Involved in Learning to Perceive
and Use Light” (April 1974), he expressed his
approach to the medium: “I am not so concerned
with the photographic medium as a smooth
rectangular window out, but as a variously shaped
and surfaced vehicle in.”
Barbara Jaffe
Dark Sun #62, 2005
Digital C-print, 24 x 20 in.
Lent by the Artist
Reflecting her interest in the dual nature of reality,
Barbara Jaffe’s work explores the expressive
possibilities of the negative print. The reversal of
black and white tones reveals an opposite world, an
alternate version of reality that the eye cannot
perceive, in the artist’s words, “the truth just below
the surface.” Working with 4x5 (inch) black and
white film, Jaffe’s early work was made by printing
from a negative created from the original positive
print. Later, she began scanning the 4x5 negatives
and reversing the tones digitally in Photoshop.
Although black and white, her photographs are
printed in color, which produces images with a rich
tonal scale and increased depth.
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Jaffe’s figures are solitary and contemplative,
evoking a sense of alienation that comprises the
modern condition. In Dark Sun #62, the artist
portrays a young woman reflecting on the death of
her father, whose face is seen in the photograph
next to the urn in the upper left. The waterfall
depicted in the wallpaper and the ashes or sand
falling through the sitter’s fingers suggest the
passage of time over the course of one’s life. In
alluding to the duality
of existence—death/life,
negative/positive, shadow/light, invisible/visible,
spiritual/material—Jaffe questions the fundamental
nature of being.
György Kepes
(American, b. Hungary, 1906-2001)
Untitled, 1938
Gelatin silver print, 8-3/4 x 7-1/2 in.
New York
In this untitled photograph, Kepes created what he
called a “photo-drawing,” employing a variety of
processes, not all of which are known. In some of
his works, Kepes applied paint to a glass plate which
he then used as a negative, while in others he
experimented with chemicals and objects directly on
photographic paper to create luminous abstractions
that reveal his interest in the phenomena of light and
geometry.
Like his close friend and fellow Hungarian, Laszlo
Moholy-Nagy, György Kepes was a pioneer in the
integration of art and technology. Having worked
with Moholy-Nagy in Berlin in the 1930s, Kepes was
invited to head the Department of Light and Color at
the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937. In 1946, he
began teaching visual design at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT), where he founded the
Center
for
Advanced
Visual
Studies—an
organization dedicated to creative collaboration
between artists and scientists—in 1967. A
photographer, painter, writer, teacher, designer, and
architect, Kepes believed that cross-fertilization
between the visual arts, science, and technology
would rejuvenate visual design.
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György Kepes
(American, b. Hungary, 1906-2001)
Untitled, 1948 (printed later)
© Estate of György Kepes,
Martina Lopez (American, b. 1952)
Heirs Come to Pass, 3, 1991
Silver dye bleach print made from digitally
assisted montage sheet, 30 x 50 in.
Courtesy of the Artist
Martina Lopez has worked with digital technology for
30 years. Her early work was autobiographical;
following the death of her father, she began creating
digital montages from family photographs to
preserve memories and create narratives. Later she
incorporated photographs from other sources, using
Photoshop to place figures within landscape settings
and to adjust color and scale. In Heirs Come to
Pass, 3, the woman at the left resembles the artist’s
mother, while the girl holding a camera reminds
Lopez of herself. Lopez refers to her work as a
“visual diary,” although her personal narrative is
transformed into a larger interpretation of the human
experience, focusing on relationships. Using
landscape as a metaphor for life, she creates an
eternal collective history, whereby the viewer’s own
memories add new meaning to the anonymous
figures in their timeless landscape.
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Man Ray (American, 1890-1976)
Cuisine (Kitchen), 1931
from the portfolio, 'Électricité'
Photogravure from rayograph, 10-1/8 x 8 in.
Museum Purchase with funds provided by
Andrea B. and Peter D. Klein
Man Ray is best known as a photographer, although
he was also a significant Dada and Surrealist artist.
Much of his work is characterized by its desire to
challenge accepted boundaries of art. His earliest
experimental photographs date to the late 1910s
when he began creating photograms, which he
called rayographs, referring both to his own name
and to the ray of light used to expose the paper.
Together with the photographer Laszlo MoholyNagy, Man Ray is credited with transforming the
photogram from a scientific record, as it had been
used in the 19th century, to an art form in its own
right. By accident, Man Ray also discovered the
process of solarization when a negative was
exposed to light during its development, creating
dark outlines and a halo effect.
Cuisine (Kitchen), Lingerie, and Électricité belong to
the portfolio Électricité, which was commissioned by
the
Parisian
electric
company
Compagnie
Parisienne de Distribution d’Electricité (CPDE) in
1931 for a marketing campaign to promote the
domestic uses of electricity. Together, the images
suggest how electricity can streamline household
chores and create a more comfortable home, while
also revealing the artist’s modern aesthetic and his
interest in technology. Man Ray uses several
experimental processes in the ten prints that
comprise the portfolio. In Cuisine, an image of a
roast chicken on rice is overlaid with a photogram of
a coil, alluding to culinary uses of electricity. Lingerie
is a photogram of an iron and a mannequin’s hand
or a glove, which were moved slightly after the initial
exposure and exposed again to create a sense of
movement, as would occur while ironing. In
Électricité, Man Ray layered two solarized negatives
of a nude with a photogram of wires, “likening the
potency of electricity with the essence of human
energy,” in the words of art historian Stefanie Spray.
Combining a truncated nude that alludes to antiquity
with the modern phenomenon of electricity, Man Ray
also suggests that the modern technological age has
superseded the old.
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Electricité, 1931
Lingerie, 1931
Chris McCaw (American, b. 1971)
Pacific Ocean, Santa Cruz, 2008
Unique gelatin silver paper negative
12 x 20 in.
The inspiration for Chris McCaw’s Sunburn series
occurred by accident; oversleeping on a camping
trip, he lost a night-long exposure of stars when the
rising sun overexposed the negative. The intense
rays caused physical changes in the film, leading the
artist to experiment with using long exposures to
document the path of the sun. McCaw constructs a
large format camera outfitted with a powerful
military-grade lens, which he points at the sun for
exposures ranging from 15 minutes to 24 hours.
These prolonged exposures magnify the sun’s
intensity, which literally burns its course onto the
paper loaded at the back of the camera.
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Solarization also occurs, causing the tones to
reverse and creating a darkened image. Like Alison
Rossiter, McCaw uses expired, vintage gelatin silver
photo paper. The gelatin in the paper reacts to the
sun’s powerful rays, leaving traces of color around
the burn mark. Subtle tones of orange and red, with
iridescent ash, outline the burn, signifying
photography’s reliance upon chemical reactions to
produce an image.
McCaw’s
work
simultaneously
addresses
photography’s past and present. While related to
contemporary
investigation
of
photographic
materials and processes, it also recalls the earliest
known photograph, which was made by the French
inventor Nicéphore Niépce in the late 1820s: an 8
hour exposure that shows buildings lit by morning
and afternoon light as the sun moved across the
sky.
Klea McKenna (American, b. 1980)
Paper Airplanes, 2011
57 unique chromogenic photographs, each 10
x 8 in. (installation 7.5 ft x 10.5 ft.)
Lent by the Artist and Von Lintel Gallery
Pinhole Camera, 2011
Vintage cookie tin, felt, copper
Paper Airplane, 2011
Folded chromogenic photograph, 10 x 8 in.
Klea McKenna is a landscape photographer whose
primary subject is light. Rather than represent the
appearance of a place that is significant to her or
that has an interesting history, she creates images
that interpret the experience of being there. Paper
Airplanes is an installation that records one day of
observation over the Pacific Ocean - the progress of
the sun from dawn to dusk. Taken from Tennessee
Cove, which served as an anti-aircraft lookout post
on the California coast during World War II, these
images were produced over a twelve-hour period
that refers to the typical shift of the soldiers stationed
there. All day and night these men looked west,
watching the horizon over the Pacific Ocean for
signs of enemy planes which never came. Instead,
they became unlikely observers of the sea and sky.
For each image, McKenna folded a sheet of lightsensitive paper into a unique paper airplane,
sequentially exposing them to the light of the horizon
in a homemade pinhole camera (seen in
case). With an opening no larger than the tip of a
pencil, the sunlight washed over the planes, creating
the intense color gradations and shapes seen in the
images. Installed in the shape of a plane’s shadow,
the images are arranged chronologically: the
photographs created at dawn, with the scarce early
morning light, start at the top left, progressing to
noon, with the most direct light, at the bottom, and
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ending at dusk, with fading light, at the upper right
hand corner. In her own words, McKenna uses
“light sensitive materials [to] interact directly with the
landscape [to] reveal something unexpected ... that
decodes the way we experience a place or a
phenomenon.”
Klea McKenna (American, b. 1980)
Rain Study #21, 2013
Photogram on gelatin silver fiber paper, unique
24 x 20 in. (61 x 50.8 cm)
Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Flutterbye, 2007
Composite of 13 mounted prints, 24 x 20 in.
Collection of Laurence Miller and Lorraine
Koziatek. Courtesy Laurence Miller Gallery,
New York
Throughout his career, Ray Metzker experimented
with multiple exposures, juxtaposed images within a
single print, and solarizations. He is best known for
his composites, in which he combined multiple
images, often from a single roll of film. In Flutterbye,
Metzker created separate photograms, cut them into
strips, and mounted them together as one unified
collage. By presenting an image composed of
multiple pieces, Metzker challenged the notion that a
photograph relies on a single coherent view.
Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind, Metzker’s
mentors at the Institute of Design where he was
pursuing a graduate degree, influenced his abstract,
conceptual approach. In his composites, he expands
upon their interest in close-ups and high contrast
images. In Metzker’s work, repeated shapes form a
spontaneous pattern, while alternating shades and
their corresponding strips simulate movement,
creating tension between two-dimensional and
three-dimensional space.
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Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Attributed to George Barford and Moholy-Nagy
Untitled, 1939 (printed c. 1939)
Gelatin silver photogram, 5 x 7 in.
New York
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy was a lifelong advocate for the
integration of technology and the arts. He believed
that the camera had irreversibly changed man’s way
of seeing the world and that photography had the
potential to revolutionize vision and communication.
He espoused these ideas in his teaching, first at the
Bauhaus, the progressive design school founded by
the architect Walter Gropius in Germany, and then in
Chicago where he established a design school in
1937 that mirrored the philosophy of its German
model. Known as the New Bauhaus, the program
integrated art, design, and industry, offering a broad
curriculum that included painting, sculpture,
industrial and stage design, typography, film,
architecture, and photography. Financial instability
resulted in the closing of the school after a year, but
in 1939 Moholy-Nagy and other faculty established
the School of Design, which later became the
Institute of Design (1944) and is now part of the
Illinois Institute of Technology.
In his own work, Moholy-Nagy is one of the
photographers most closely associated with
exploring the creative potential of the photogram. In
his teaching he encouraged formal experimentation
with strong geometry, rhythmic textures and light,
disorienting perspectives, unexpected compositions,
and other unusual effects that opened viewers’ eyes
to a new way of seeing. Moholy-Nagy’s influence on
art education in 20th century America cannot be
overstated. Many of the artists in this exhibition owe
a debt to his progressive vision; some taught with
him, others were his students, and most benefitted
from his tremendous legacy.
Abelardo Morell (American, b. Cuba, 1948)
Camera Obscura: The Cloisters at Lacock
Abbey, England, 2003
Archival pigment print, 18 x 22-1/2 in.
Courtesy Abelardo Morell, Boston and Edwynn
Houk Gallery, New York/Zürich
In The Cloisters at Lacock Abbey, England, Morell
utilizes the optics of the oldest known camera: the
camera obscura. Rather than building a box-sized
version, Morell converts large rooms into pinhole
cameras. Black plastic covers the windows to
achieve total darkness and a hole no bigger than a
dime allows light to project an inverted view of the
outside world onto the opposite wall. In a traditional
camera obscura, the projected image would be
exposed onto light sensitive paper. Instead, Morell
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captures his image using a large format camera,
obtaining a view of the wall itself with the projected
image superimposed upon it.
The use of the camera obscura evokes
photography’s origins. Developed during the
Renaissance using optical principles that were
understood in antiquity, the camera obscura was
used to project images that aided in perspective
studies. With the addition of mirrors and lenses, the
camera obscura led to the development of the
mechanical camera in the 19th century.
Morell’s choice of location is significant. William
Henry Fox Talbot, one of the early inventors of
photography, lived at Lacock Abbey and some of his
earliest experiments with photographic processes
were made there. Morell’s camera obscura image is
an homage to Talbot, his photographic experiments,
and a birthplace of the medium.
Fern #10: Cliché Verre, 2009
Archival pigment print, 22-1/2 x 18 in.
The term cliché-verre is French for “glass picture,”
referring to a handmade glass negative. Nineteenthcentury painters like Camille Corot and JeanFrancois Millet used this technique to create
landscape images. With this method, flat pieces of
glass are smoked with a lit candle, and an image is
drawn in the soot-covered surface. The negative is
placed over a sheet of light sensitive paper and
exposed to light, creating a work that relates to
drawing and photography equally.
Morell’s Fern was created using a variation of the
cliché- verre process. Rather than soot, Morell coats
a glass plate with layers of ink to achieve varied
tonal qualities. He places fern cuttings into the halfdried ink, repeating the process until he is satisfied
with the patterns created. He then digitally scans the
negative and prints it. Morell’s use of a historic
process evokes the birth of photography, although
here adapted to modern technology.
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Tent-Camera Image On Ground:
View of Landscape Outside Florence, 2010
Archival pigment print, 30 x 40 in.
Abelardo Morell is a contemporary photographer
who adapts historic processes to new ends. In his
tent camera images, he employs optics similar to
those used in a camera lucida, the 19th century
device that enabled artists to project an image onto
a flat surface for tracing. Here, a view of the
surrounding environment is projected onto the
ground inside the tent, enabling Morell to record
both the ground and the exterior landscape in a
single image.
Floris Neususs (German, b. 1937)
Nachtbild (63), 1987
Photogram, 25 x 20-1/2 in.
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Floris Neususs (German, b. 1937)
Nachtbild (48), 1991
Photogram, 68 x 42 in.
Floris
Neusüss
began
experimenting
with
photograms in the 1960s and, since 1971, has held
the position of professor in Experimental
Photography at the University of Kassel in Germany.
His early work often focused on the human form,
although the Nachtbild (Night Picture) series focuses
on nature. Placing light sensitive paper on the
ground in his garden at night, Neusüss exposes the
paper using flashes of light or by allowing lightning
to expose it naturally. The darkened areas,
elongated streaks, and shattered shapes reveal
layers of leaves and other natural materials on the
ground. By recording multiple exposures in a single
image, Neusüss creates a densely layered abstract
composition. Like other artists who experiment with
photograms, such as Adam Fuss and Melissa
Fleming (seen elsewhere in the exhibition), Neusüss
exchanges the control of the darkroom for the
chance of the natural world. Although related to
botanical cyanotype images by mid-19th century
artists like Anna Atkins, Neusüss is not interested in
recording the appearance of a single natural
specimen, but rather seeks to reveal a more
nuanced view of the natural world. In some works,
he evokes man’s relationship to nature by including
human figures as well.
Andreas Rentsch (Swiss, b. 1963)
Entangled with Justice, 2007
Unique Polaroid Type 55 negative
4-3/4 x 4 in.
Horrified by the photographs documenting the
torture of Iraqi prisoners held at Abu Ghraib,
Andreas Rentsch’s series Entangled with Justice
speaks to the hypocrisy behind the idea of justice in
contemporary consciousness. Rentsch uses a 4x5
(inch) Polaroid camera to create these images. In
the studio, he places himself in front of the camera,
leaving the lens open as he poses in various
positions. He outlines himself with a flashlight to
record his poses onto the film. Instead of separating
the negative from the positive according to the
recommended process, Rentsch leaves the image to
develop over days, weeks, or months, allowing the
chemistry to continue to work. An overall brown
tonality and grainy texture emerges, although
Rentsch subsequently removes this texture from
within the figures, maintaining the outline which
serves as a boundary confining the figures within the
gritty texture that surrounds them. When satisfied
with the results, Rentsch chemically fixes the image
to secure its permanence, preserving the chance
effects as metaphors for life’s unpredictability.
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Andreas Rentsch (Swiss, b. 1963)
The Wanderer, 2012-13
Video: 3 min. 49 sec.
Music: Ulrich Krieger
Lent by the Artist
Andreas Rentsch’s oeuvre is characterized by its
varied exploration of photographic materials and
processes. The Wanderer is a short film comprised
of 2,600 still images, each frame a photograph
created using a digital camera outfitted with a
pinhole lens. Setting his shutter for a long exposure,
Rentsch achieves grainy, indistinct images that
evoke the ambiguity and mystery of life.
Capturing movement on film fascinated 19th century
photographers like Eadweard Muybridge, Thomas
Eakins, and Étienne-Jules Marey, whose works
anticipated moving pictures. While they used stopaction techniques to arrest movement, breaking it
into its component parts, Rentsch combines
individual still images to create movement, tracing
the thrills and anxieties of one man’s life journey.
Mariah Robertson (American, b. 1975)
222, 2012
Unique C-print, 1200 x 30 in.
Courtesy of Mariah Robertson and
American Contemporary
Mariah Robertson’s work explores the action of
chemicals in the darkroom. Wearing a hazmat suit
and special breathing apparatus, Robertson pours
and sprays developers and fixer directly onto her
paper, resulting in abstract splatters, splashes, drips,
and broad swatches of color formed by the
interaction of the chemicals. Over the years, she has
discovered the laws governing some of her results.
Some colors depend on the strength and
temperature of the chemicals; using developer at a
colder temperature, for example, creates green.
Mixing fixer, which shows up as white, and
developer, which shows up as black, results in
various colors depending on the strength of the
solutions as they collide and break down the dye
layers in the paper. Other effects are obtained by
incorporating photograms, negatives, masking the
paper with tape, or exposing the paper through
geometric configurations of gels. While she can
anticipate certain outcomes, Robertson’s process
largely depends on chance. 222 is printed on a full
roll of photographic paper measuring 100 feet long.
Exposing the paper bit by bit, it must all be
processed at once, requiring between 12 and 16
hours to complete. The continuous rolls are
displayed in various configurations, undulating
across the ceiling, down and around walls, and
along the floor. In their process and presentation,
they are a hybrid of photography, sculpture, and
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Detail:
installation, challenging our traditional approach to
viewing a photograph.
Alison Rossiter (American, b. 1953)
Kodak Azo Hard F, expired in March 1918,
processed in 2010, 2010
Unique gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 in.
A photographic conservator by day, Alison Rossiter
is well versed in the history of photographic
processes. In her own work, she uses photographic
paper past its expiration date, onto which she pours
and pools developer and other required darkroom
chemistry. The chemicals pull dark forms from the
expired paper as they interact with its emulsion.
Occasionally, light leaks and marks or fingerprints
from past owners will surface. Manipulating the
chemicals by hand gives each image a unique
composition dependent on the paper’s condition,
coloring, surface, and age. While her work entails
some traditional darkroom processes, it thoroughly
rejects the concept of photography as a document of
anything other than itself. Rossiter’s images reveal
only the process used in their creation.
Neil Scholl (American, b. 1929)
Quebec, Canada, 1961
Archival inkjet print on archival paper
10-11/16 x 8-13/16 in.
Neil Scholl’s early work, produced during the 1950s
and 60s, focused on New York and its environs,
often transforming the geometry of the city into
formal abstraction. In Quebec, Canada, Scholl
experiments with both the photogram and
solarization. After exposing the image of the gazebo
onto the paper, Scholl developed the print using
weak developer. He then placed gravel on top and
again exposed the paper to light, solarizing the
image and obtaining an overall gritty textured
pattern. Scholl allowed the developer to oxidize,
enriching the tonal scale. The solarized texture
imbues the familiar scene with an otherworldly
aspect. Perhaps as a reference to developing
technology, the pattern also evokes the static seen
on period black and white television screens.
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Aaron Siskind (American, 1903-1991)
North Carolina 35, 1951 (printed c. 1951)
New York
As a member of the Photo League in New York in
the late 1930s, Aaron Siskind began his career as a
documentary photographer who recorded New York
City life during the Depression. In 1951, Harry
Callahan, who was familiar with Siskind’s abstract
photographs, persuaded him to join the photography
faculty at the Illinois Institute of Technology. In
keeping with the school’s philosophy, Siskind’s
photographic work was experimental in nature; he
often abstracted subjects by focusing closely on
detail or manipulating light and shadow. In North
Carolina 35 Siskind evokes the gestural tendencies
of the Abstract Expressionists, who were his friends,
particularly the work of Franz Kline.
Siskind’s abstracted close-up crops are achieved in
the camera, rather than during the printing process.
While his work recalls a similar approach to that of
Edward Weston, his work was not well received by
contemporary critics who favored “straight”
photography that objectively depicted the scene
viewed.
Frederick Sommer
(American, b. Italy 1905-1999)
Untitled (Smoke on Glass)
1962 (printed c.1990s)
Gelatin silver print mounted to board
13-3/8 x 10-1/4 in.
New York
Often described as eerie and unnerving, Sommer’s
photographs reveal the close relationship between
photography and drawing. To create this image
Sommer employed a variation of the historic clichéverre method used by French artists in the mid-19th
century. First, he drew on aluminum foil with a soft
pencil. The relief pattern formed was then smoked,
drawing side down, with a candle. The combined
drawing and smoke deposit were then transferred to
a greased glass that became the negative used in
the enlarger. When projected onto light sensitive
paper and developed, an abstract composition
emerged. Untitled (Smoke on Glass), like the clichéverre process itself, exemplifies photography’s
definition as drawing with light.
In a letter to Edmund Teske, the photographer Minor
White wrote that Sommer’s work will “make you
squirm.” The dark tonal range in Untitled (Smoke on
Glass), evokes a chaotic moment not unlike Raoul
Ubac’s Battle of the Amazons, and in fact, Sommer’s
work has been compared to Surrealist experiments
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with fumage and frottage. Like cliché-verre, fumage
captures the impressions formed by smoke from a
candle. Frottage experiments with texture; by
placing paper over various surfaces and rubbing
with a pencil, Surrealist artists achieved a wide
range of tone and texture.
Grete Stern
(Argentine, b. German, 1904-1999)
Dream 31, 1949 (printed 1991)
© Grete Stern, Courtesy of
Nailya Alexander Gallery, NY
These prints belong to Grete Stern’s aptly named
series, Sueños (Dreams). Created between 1948
and 1951 for a weekly column entitled
“Psychoanalysis Will Help You” in the Argentine
woman’s magazine Idilio, the series is comprised of
140 images that illustrate sociologist Gino Germani’s
interpretations of dreams submitted by young,
middle class readers.
Although created several decades after Surrealism
emerged in Paris, these works exemplify the
movement’s attraction to photography for its ability
to distort reality. Inspired by Freudian theory,
Surrealism explored the world of dreams and the
unconscious. In the Sueños works, Stern combines
multiple photographs to create one seamless story.
The reptilian head, the cigarette, and the demure
woman are symbols based on Freud’s writings, here
depicting a woman seduced by a suave male. While
other photographers created supernatural images
using multiple negatives or double exposures, Stern
created a photomontage, a popular technique at the
Bauhaus when she was a student there in the early
1930s.
Grete Stern
(Argentine, b. German, 1904-1999)
Dream 28, 1951 (printed 1995)
© Grete Stern, Courtesy of
Nailya Alexander Gallery, NY
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Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948)
Lightning Fields 220, 2009
Gelatin silver print
23 x 18-1/2 in. (58.4 cm x 47 cm)
Courtesy of the Artist and Pace Gallery LLC
For Hiroshi Sugimoto, Lightning Fields is a scientific
study that builds upon the work of Benjamin Franklin
and Michael Faraday and their discoveries regarding
the nature of electricity. Dispelling sparks on a film
negative, Sugimoto creates a photogram-like image
of electrical charges. The images are produced in
the darkroom. Wearing rubber- soled shoes,
Sugimoto waves a metal wand attached to a
powerful Van De Graaf generator, creating static
electricity. Eventually, he points the wand towards
the unexposed film, which is backed by a metal
plate, creating “… a big bang.” “It’s a miniature
lightning field,” he says. The electric current
produces patterns on the film that are not seen until
developed.
Electricity can be a destructive force in the
darkroom; static can ruin a negative or scar a
developed photo. Sugimoto inverts this problem and
claims electricity as the primary subject in this
series. He considers his entire oeuvre an exploration
of the history of human life. In the Lightning Field
works, he probes the beginnings of life itself,
describing his process as similar to the first
meteorite hitting the earth and citing a theory of
evolution that hypothesizes that life on earth was
created when meteorites containing amino acids fell
into the seas. While a product of the intersection of
art and science, the images are profoundly beautiful,
with dramatic contrast between the brilliant whites
and rich blacks that document nature’s wonders.
Maggie Taylor (American, b. 1961)
Cloud sisters, 2001
Pigmented digital print, 15 x 15 in.
Lent by the Artist
Although she began her career as a still life
photographer, Maggie Taylor was an enthusiastic
convert to digital technology. Using a flatbed
scanner and her computer, she creates densely
layered montages that defy traditional categories.
Her process begins with a wide range of images
appropriated from 19th century photographs and
prints and other objects with a sense of history, as
well as her own photographs, which she scans,
enhances, and manipulates using Photoshop. Often
incorporating hundreds of layers, Taylor creates a
cohesive visual space, depicting familiar objects in
dream-like worlds. Although her work depends on
narrative, she invites the viewer to make their own
interpretations, saying: “There is no one meaning for
any
of the images; rather they exist as a kind of
visual riddle
or open-ended poem, meant to be
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both playful and provocative.”
Maggie Taylor (American, b. 1961)
Small boat waiting, 2012
Pigmented digital print, 15 x 15 in.
Lent by the Artist
Edmund Teske (American, 1911-1996)
Untitled (composite with male nude and
tool chest), c. 1962
© Estate of Edmund Teske,
Edmund Teske’s training included a wide range of
experiences, including photographing architectural
projects for Frank Lloyd Wright, teaching with
Moholy-Nagy at the New Bauhaus, and working as a
studio assistant to Berenice Abbott in New York. In
the 1940s, he relocated to Los Angeles, where he
associated with bohemian intellectuals and artists
and began exploring experimental techniques like
solarization and combination printing. His interest in
Hindu philosophy led him to believe that a single
image could not fully define a moment, and about
1950 he began layering multiple negatives in an
attempt to communicate what he called “universal
essences.” In his series Shiva-Shakti – referring to
the opposing forces that create a unified
consciousness (as in yin and yang in Chinese
philosophy) – Teske used the same image of a male
nude overlaid with other images including
landscapes, interiors, and faces. These two untitled
photographs relate to this series; in one the nude is
overlaid with a meadow, while in the other a tool
chest follows the contours of the body. In the former
image, Teske combines the masculine and feminine,
which he believed coexisted within everyone, while
in the latter he intertwines the animate and the
inanimate. Through this manipulation of images,
Teske provided a means to reach spiritual
understanding through photography.
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Edmund Teske (American, 1911-1996)
Untitled (composite with male nude and Box
Canyon Landscape), c. 1970s
© Estate of Edmund Teske,
Raoul Ubac (French, 1910-1985)
Le Combat des Penthesilees (Battle of the
Amazons), 1937
Silver print on Agfa-Brovira, 15-5/8 x 11-3/4 in.
From the Collection of Alexander Novak
Raoul Ubac’s style is informed by Man Ray’s
solarization process and inspired by Andre Breton’s
Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, which defines
Surrealism
as
“psychic
automatism,”
the
performance of an act without conscious thought.
Ubac’s photographic process illustrates this ideal.
The mangled limbs and broken bodies in Le Combat
des Penthesilees were created through a complex
series of steps. First, a single model was
photographed in several poses. The images were
then combined in a photomontage (a photographic
collage) that was solarized, and then the process
was repeated. With each consecutive print, Ubac
also layered random objects and additional images
until finally, various solarized prints were
photographed as a single unified image. For Ubac,
the process of creating the photograph–
experimenting with repetition, chance, and
improvisation–was as integral to the content of the
final product as the visual image itself.
Ubac’s choice of subject matter, however, is also
significant.
Not only are the disfigured bodies a
testament to military conflict in Europe, but they also
relate to the Surrealist obsession with the erotic. The
art historian Rosalind Krauss highlights this image to
illustrate photography’s prominence in the Surrealist
movement, describing the repeated solarizations as
“unclassified space” where the unconscious can rule
supreme.
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Jerry Uelsmann (American, b. 1934)
Untitled, 1967
Gelatin silver print, 14 x 11 in.
Lent by the Artist
Untitled, 1982
Lent by the Artist
When Jerry Uelsmann began his career,
photography was widely accepted as objective
documentation. Inspired by Minor White’s belief that
the camera can transcend reality, Uelsmann creates
exquisite surrealist images that have no counterpart
in the observed world. Employing the 19th century
technique of layered images, Uelsmann constructs
his compositions from multiple negatives. Using
several enlargers, he sequentially exposes different
negatives onto a single sheet of paper. In this
image, for example, one negative was used for the
house, another for the tree, and others for the
background and sky. Uelsmann’s imagery helped
promote photography as a means of personal
expression, and in 1967 he was featured in the first
solo show awarded to a photographer at the
Museum
of
Modern
Art,
a
significant
acknowledgement of photography as an art form.
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Undiscovered Self, 1999
Lent by the Artist
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Modern Alchemy: Experiments in Photography Illustrated Checklist

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