Jerry Uelsmann

I’ve been thinking about what direction I want to go in for my next body of work and I was thinking about how I can create a narrative or story with the people I photograph. I was also thinking about the reasons why I photograph and I came to the realization that for me photographing is not about capturing the reality of a person or a moment, it’s about creating a fantasy. For the same reason that people, myself included, read fictional books, I photograph as an escape from the world. As I was thinking about how I could set up a narrative of fantasy with my subjects I came across an artist that has greatly inspired me. Jerry Uelsmann creates other worlds and dreamlike situations through the use of darkroom manipulation. Like Uelsmann, I want to use the darkroom to manipulate my images so that I can create this narrative. Uelsmann uses multiple exposures in the darkroom to create his images, which I find to be astonishing considering the difficultly of piecing together images in this way opposed to using photoshop to get the same effect. This is what I love about his work, the fact that he has not given in to the digital era and even continues to use the same camera he used in the 60s, a Bronica GS-1. Like Uelsmann, I want to experiment with multiple exposures in the darkroom but I also want to use my negatives like pieces in a collage, much like I do with cyanotypes and Van Dykes. I would also like to try out the same camera that Uelsmann is using to see how the outcome will vary from the use of a 35 mm. His photographs have a beautiful quality of light, especially in the photograph above created by Uelsmann in 1986 and untitled. The shimmer of the satin dress as it morphs into waves is mesmerizing. I hope to create this same compelling effect within my work as I create fantasy worlds and narratives with my own subjects.

You can view Uelsmann’s work at this site: http://www.uelsmann.net.

Scannography

In my quest to satisfy my insatiable urge to explore alternative photography processes I came across a group of artists focusing on a technique, termed scannography, of using a scanner instead of a camera in order to create images. http://scannography.org/

However, my assumption that this form of art would be considered alternative photography is purely my own. In fact, Christian Staebler, the webmaster of the site and also a scannography artist, asserts that “it’s not photography, but it reproduces the reality with extraordinary precision.” I’m sure most of the artists practicing scannography do not share his philosophy, but it does bring about an interesting question about what is and is not photography. Is photography only photography when a camera is used? When a scanner is used to make art images should it then be considered a camera? This also forces me to ask myself whether the art forms I have been practicing, cyanotype and van dyke printing, should be considered photography? Without the use of a camera does it make the technique closer to that of printmaking?

Questions aside, I find scannography to be an extremely seductive art form. The clarity and detail that is possible with the use of a scanner is amazing, like with the work of Joann Urban and Dale Hoopingarner (two artists found on the website). However, for other scannography artists, like Sian Aldridge and Rebecca Wild, the scanner gives the artist a new medium to create beautiful abstractions. One artist, Thomas McDonnell, I find most intriguing because he took his scanner outside in order to capture images of people and places, thereby directly turning the scanner into his camera. The scanner seems to capture images with a sense of unreality and at the same time a stark reality.

While I was looking on the scannography site there was one artist I did not find, who I initially set out to find, Katrina Jebb. Jebb used industrial scanners, or rather photocopy machines to create images of Tori Amos for her album From the Choirgirl Hotel. The best examples I could find of this particular work was on a Tori Amos website. http://www.hereinmyhead.com/artimp/katerina/index.html Tori had an interesting thought about being photographed, stating that “it’s photocopying your thoughts”. This is something I don’t think many have said about a camera.