comments : cameraless works / photograms (1991–1993)


06.05 [revised 07.08]

these are the first works i produced following the "epiphany" i had in 1990
concerning dissatisfactions with painting's overt linearity. from that moment,
i would fundamentally change my relationship to process and consider
my forming intention as a field of potential framed by choice and intent.
this change would result in the creation of hundreds of intimately scaled
cameraless works. the images on the web site are examples of some
of the larger works produced.

these works were produced using the materials and chemistries of traditional
photography, but no cameras or other optical focusing apparatuses were used.
ordinary found objects, selected for their actual and potential light-transmitting
properties, were used as three-dimensional negatives. simple manipulations
of these found-object "negatives" in the darkroom yielded an infinite variety
of cast shadow types which were then captured on paper in reverse tones.
working "blindly", in reverse and in the dark, i engineered and recorded patterns
of shadow play which severed the relationship between sign and signifier.
a conceptual and formal "dislocation" emerged which confounded natural
forensic urges to recover meaning by giving each work a subject and each
subject a name.

04.00 (revised 07.08)

the actinism of light (i.e., its ability to trigger chemical reactions) is an apt
metaphor for the expression of thought through language and form. though
central to the development of photography as a tool for fixing precise images
of the fleeting world, photo actinism has rarely been exploited as a means
and an end in art. light leaving a point 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 a gradient of chemical changes
that is readily seen, measurable and available for creative exploitation. the medium
of photochemical change (or response) presents new opportunities for developing
work methods that more closely parallel what i understand of my thinking processes.
it gives me a sense of being everywhere at once, something the linear stroke-
follows-stroke techniques of traditional painting could never provide.