Prelude Variation

May 2, 2005

I've been revisiting an old stand of trees this week. I caught them in a camera obscura many years prior to 2005, but I find myself returning to them now with the intention of including them in an upcoming show in Eugene. In their "pure" form they look something like this:

Prelude (variation), 1998 (pinhole image caught outside Corvallis, OR)

I'm still finding out what they'll look like backed by gold.

Beauty is a Void

April 28, 2005

In college I took a concept seminar class on beauty. The first assignment was to make an artwork that was as unattractive as possible. For some this meant creating a piece of kitsch, for others it was an exercise in audacity. I chose to subvert a historical masterpiece and, with apologies to Van Gogh, turned Starry Night into something utterly banal.

It's difficult to intentionally make something ugly. Maybe this isn't true in the industrial world of consumer goods, but at an art school tethered to a historical tradition of craftsmanship, it is a challenge. Many people didn't succeed. Most people struggled with the idea.

After our critique we were randomly assigned someone else's hideous object to somehow beautify. The parameters were fairly loose: essentially, you had to have the object serve as the primary material for the new work.

I was given a ceramic mosaic fish with kissy-lips and cartoon eyes. As Ceramics  was a studio I studiously avoided (too dirty), it would prove difficult for me to work in that medium. I opted instead to document the creation utilizing some pinhole cameras I'd recently built. 

I draped the fish in some white muslin and then sprayed it with water for that "wet drapery" look so adored by Classical sculptors of the Hellenistic Period. Between that, and the softening effect of the pinhole camera, I was fairly certain that I could create a few images that would be considered beautiful.

For the most part the results weren't that intriguing.

But, oddly enough, this image of the fish lips. . . 

. . . would unexpectedly mimic earlier work. . .

. . . and remain one of the more enigmatic photographs I've ever taken.

As the World Turns

February 28, 2005

The world in motion.

The world at rest under the watchful eye of the moon. 

O Moon, how I wish I still hadn't left you behind in LA when I moved. You and Sun were two of my greatest theatrical creations. Now I fear that you lean forgotten and dusty in a corner. How many pinhole images could you have been a part of if only I'd valued you enough to pack you among my trinkets and socks? If I take nothing else from your loss it's that I must treat my creations well, or they will become little more than regrets.

The Director Directs

Tomorrow may, or may not, wrap up filming for the short film I've been producing with The Company. Last weekend was derailed by a tooth extraction  that was in no way exacerbated by our director's recent flirtation with cigarettes. Don't smoke kids— cigarette smoke eats molars.

* * * * *

I've served as cinematographer for this outing, which is a fancy way of saying I've held a relatively heavy camera for very long periods of time while draping myself over cubicle walls or pressing my body into stucco corners. The Director fancies the exceedingly long takes. When I say long I mean takes so long that they potentially border on the uncomfortable for the audience. Relentless monotony isn't the objective of every take, but used sparingly, it may prove to be a very effective way of conveying the indistinct personality of the lead character. 

I must confess that I find it odd to serve as a conduit for someone else's vision on this project. I've spent so many years working alone on my artwork that it has required some readjustment on my part to not be the peanut gallery every time I hear the word, "Cut." 

At the same time I find it strangely liberating to not be the person controlling the final vision. I power up the equipment, check the settings, point and shoot. In some ways it is akin to my relationship with pinhole photography— I can't really control the outcome so faith is the only confidence I can hold. In this instance my faith rests with my friends, with the script, and with the actors. 

* * * * *

My wife has often pointed out that film is a communal art form. It is inclusive because it is impossible to realize alone, and perhaps this contributes subtly to the magic film works over our culture. We must labor together to create it, and then we choose to sit in a darkened theater for two hours and share in the viewing experience with a broader public. Stories are projected onto a screen so that they might add another perspective, another sorrow, another joy to the chronicle of our own lives. Story telling may be one of the few constants in the history of mankind and the moving image shows no sign of relinquishing its century-long domination of our narrative landscape. 

In two hundred years art history texts aren't going to be extolling our contemporary painters with nearly the same vigor that they'll be studying the cultural relevance of James Cameron or the cut-and-paste narratives of Quentin Tarantino. 

Knowing this has made me seriously consider the frequency with which I should be putting down the gesso to pick up the video camera.

110 Specters

Near the end of the last school year I made simple pinhole cameras with a few of my students to coincide with our studies of the Civil War. I had missed the opportunity to share my love of pinhole when I taught Optics so I wasn't going to lose out again. The incredible challenges that Mathew Brady's field photographers faced to secure their images served as a brief introduction to photographic science. 

Soldiers in the trenches before battle, Petersburg, VA. 1865

Courtesy of the National Archives, photo no. 111-B-157

We then constructed simple black boxes with a copper pinhole to adhere over the rather diminutive film plane of a roll of 110 film. 110 film has become an antique itself, originating in 1972, it eliminated the need to rewind the film roll and was one of many Kodak products aimed at ease-of-use. Only one store in Portland still carried it: the decidedly old-school Blue Moon Camera in St. John's. Apparently, the frame numbers and edge bands are pre-exposed on each roll of 110 film, which explains the black line that's evident in two of the three examples posted here.

One of the things I prize about pinhole is its unpredictability, but whether or not my students will look upon these results with the same exhilaration remains to be seen. It has been my experience that most new photographers prize pictorial exactitude over atmospheric color burns. Nevertheless, I think that these images display a spiritual energy that would be difficult to preconceive and harder still to execute. Here is the play of light in time creating momentary specters on a physical form— not all that different from the faces of the long-dead staring back at us before entering the battlefield.