photograms and actinic light


i had an epiphany in 1990 relating to some
of my long-standing dissatisfactions with
painting’s overt linearity. from that clarifying
moment forward, i fundamentally changed
my relationship to process to one in which
my forming intentions became boundless
and probabilistic in nature. i was now working
with a field of potential, inside which an infinite
range of formal and gestural assertions could
occur. although I could never be certain,
I liked to think that this receptive field
of action oscillates and shimmers
everywhere and at all times.

the art and science of photography centers
on exposing sensitive materials to light in a
controlled or everywhere/all-at-once fashion,
depending on whether a camera or light-
focusing apparatus is involved. i realized
i could, by employing the most expeditious
camera-less photographic process, distance
myself for a time from representational
painting’s strong focus on compositional
strategy as a means to organize and frame
visual fields in pictorial space.

these works were produced using traditional
and alternative photographic processes.
no cameras were used. ordinary found
objects, selected for their light-transmitting
properties, served as both lens and negative.
simple manipulations of these objects
in the darkroom yielded an infinite variety
of cast shadow types which were captured
on paper in reverse tones. working blindly,
i recorded patterns of shadow play which
severed relationships between sign and
signifier, creating conceptual and formal
dislocations that confounded the disoriented
viewer’s natural forensic urge to recover
meaning by giving each work a subject
and each subject a name.


santa fe, new mexico  |  june 2005  (rev. 05.23)

the actinism of light—its ability to trigger
chemical reactions—is an apt metaphor
for the transformation of thought through
language and form. though central to the
development of photography as a tool for
fixing precise images of the fleeting world,
photoactinism has not often been exploited
as a means and an end in art.

light leaving a source arrives at every point
of the surface it illuminates at essentially
the same time. on a photosensitive surface,
factors such as light composition, source
distance, beam intensity, color temperature,
angle of incidence, and exposure time produce
gradients of chemical changes that can readily
be seen, measured and exploited.

photochemical change (or photochemical
response) as a medium and field of action,
presented me brand new opportunities
for developing studio working methods
i felt more closely paralleled the way
i think. it gave me a powerful, open sense
of transience; of being everywhere all at
once—something the stroke-follows-stroke
techniques of painting could not then provide.


santa fe, new mexico   |   april 2000  (rev. 05.23)