Lloyd Godman: Enlightened Visions
The adjective protean hardly seems adequate to describe the force of nature that is Lloyd Godman—photographer, organic gardener, environmental activist, educator, writer and visionary. The native New Zealander has for the past several decades produced numerous bodies of work that celebrate the power and mystery of nature while questioning our collective complacency towards the planet we inhabit. Born in Dunedin, New Zealand, and now living in Melbourne, Australia, Godman applies probing intelligence and generosity of spirit to unique multiple-image panoramas, multi-media installations, and performative works that challenge and engage viewers with direct and transformative grace.


Lloyd Godman

When did you begin taking photographs?
When I left school in 1967, I had a job as an electrician at a newspaper. I felt a strong gravitational pull to the photographic department, where I would use the darkrooms during my lunch breaks. The lunch breaks got longer and longer until I was banned from the floor where the darkrooms were situated. I found out 30 years later there was a real battle in the department. Some photographers saw me as a threat and were trying to keep me out, while others saw great potential and were trying to encourage me. At the time I was blind to all this and just kept taking and experimenting with photography wherever I could. In situations like this, the word “no” to me has always meant “find the back door.”

You started out taking more or less traditional landscape images; how did these morph into complex multimedia entities?
From 1976 I was exposed to a huge number of fine art books. At that time, I had a job making slides for an art school and saw the work of people like Man Ray, Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Beuys, Richard Long, Christo, Andy Goldsworthy, etc. I was also taken with the work of George Greenough, who really opened up the potentials of what a surf movie could be. If you haven’t seen Crystal Voyager, track it down. The last 13 minutes is Greenough’s work—just magic. Pink Floyd wrote the soundtrack in a swap for the film as a light show. Then, over a few decades, I kept chipping at the edges of photography in my own work until the boundaries broke down and light became the important factor. I like the idea that light feeds us: It sustains us indirectly through the food we eat and the subjects we seek as photographers. It’s a spiritual inspiration. So I began exploring the margins. But the exploration into multimedia has never meant abandoning the things that went before. I still enjoy taking traditional photographic images. They have huge elemental power and relevance. Sometimes the simplest things work best, but my visual vocabulary keeps expanding. I remember reading a book on the Tao that said do everything with love and use just enough force to achieve your aim. Four ounces is the right amount, found pounds is too much, and two ounces is not enough. So I sometimes still use a plain old camera.

Is it safe to say that you don’t recognize limits in finding new avenues of expression and uses for photography?
I have never been into popularizing and marketing a single style of work. Yes, there are still surprises and mysteries to be discovered, and I’m always enthralled by this exploration—the whole thing is a huge journey.


Body Symbols-Nude 281-10

What triggered your concern with ecological issues?
As long as I can remember, I have always looked to nature as a means to center myself. If ever there were some family conflict I would run off to the bush or the ocean. When the New Zealand government decided to build the hydro dam at Clyde and flood my favourite river, the Clutha, in 1982, I became highly motivated—I was spurred into action on a creative level as I had never been before with the series “Last Rivers Song.” Since then, ecological issues have been at the center of my work.

There’s an intriguing statement on your website: “The largest photosensitive emulsion we know of is the planet Earth. As vegetation grows, dies back, changes colour with the seasons, the “photographic image” that is our planet alters. When did this awareness dawn?
In 1996, I came to the realization that my two passions, photography and growing plants, both used the action of light. Funny it took me so long to get there when Archimedes and Aristotle made mention of both. The concept came from the work I did growing images into the leaves of Bromeliad plants. It’s easy to think about photography only in terms of representational images taken with a camera and lens. But when you take on board the idea that they are just abstractions that range from dark to light, then you can imagine yourself thousands of miles out in space looking at the Earth, and the planet becomes a continually evolving photographic emulsion, an abstract image.

What are some of the ways in which organic gardening and your art intersect?
I had cut lots of alchemic symbols from a special tape and placed them on the leaves of Bromeliads—the process was similar to a basic photogram. Because I had to expose them to the sun for about four months to create the photosynthetic images, I decided to install them in various situations and document the installations. Bromeliads are epiphytes, and for me symbolize sustainability, so I used locations like coal-burning plant rooms, elevators, etc. Then I began suspending them in galleries and used infrared-activated projectors to project light through them and create shadows on huge tissue-paper screens.

What threads link all your photographic series?
I always find some link between even the most disparate works. This often takes time, but then the things that seem displaced always reveal something I had not considered. Connections with plants, sustainability, environment and light inevitably surface.


Carbon Obscura I

Describe the motivation behind the “Carbon Obscura” series.
I was invited to do an ephemeral sculpture and was given a greenhouse to work in. I was looking for a way to darken the space and found 1,000 sheets of carbon paper for $2 in a recycle shop. It all clicked—greenhouse gases and carbon—and so I drew trees (which are the key part of global carbon-trading schemes) by pricking thousands of pinholes in the surface of the carbon paper. I added a fog generator, which was activated as viewers stepped into the space. This added another reference—we are all responsible for our own gas emissions—and it brought the rays of light to life in a seductive, kinetic manner. I found that this project gave me a greater understanding of light and the camera, even though no camera is involved in the process.

It’s like a symphony of light. Is that an intentional effect?
Yes. I had a good idea what it would look like from Line Describing a Cone—a 1973 16mm film by an artist named Anthony McCall. One seven-year-old described it as thousands of violin strings made of light, so your analogy with music is consistent. It strikes me as a very direct way of bringing the viewer and the power and beauty of light together, without the mediating presence of cameras, darkrooms, chemistry and photo paper.

There’s something very spiritual and mystical about this connection.
Despite the seriousness of the environmental issues, that has now become the over-riding aspect of the work. By creating an absence of daylight it has this incredible presence that captivates people. They go back three or even four times—the experience is never the same. One guy spent an hour in there meditating.

From this work I had a dream: I flew to the stars at the edge of the universe, and discovered they were not stars. There was a huge black wall that kept everything contained, and the bright lights I thought were stars were actually small openings that let light shine in. Looking through them, they were portals to other dimensions. That’s also what it feels like if you are inside and look through the pinholes—the world outside looks new.


Last Rivers Song-Clutha Panel VIII (detail)

The “Last Rivers Song” series is a visual response to the building of the Clyde Dam you referenced at the beginning of this interview. Yet the sweep and movement in the images (enhanced by time exposures and mural-like framing) seem to suggest that man cannot keep nature bottled up forever.
The Clyde Dam came at a huge cost to the environment, but also a big financial cost: When they built it, they discovered that it was on a fault line and that nature could undo the engineering. Then they discovered that as the dam filled with water, the steep banks could collapse, causing a catastrophic wave, so on both counts they threw more money and engineering at it. The fact that nature could reclaim the dam was always in my mind as I took the images.

I like the dark tones and turbulent energy, which speak beyond notions of aesthetic beauty to the rather awesome power of nature itself, which can manifest in both positive and negative fashion.
One critic wrote about this work that there was a scream in every drop of water.

Black and white, the sublime landscape, and a spiritual presence have been key to much of New Zealand’s art for 100 years:

“Driving one day with the family over the hills from the Taieri Mouth to the Taieri Plain, I first became aware of my own particular God....Big hills stood in front of the little hills, which rose up distantly across the plain from the flat land: there was a landscape of splendour and order and peace. I saw something logical, orderly and beautiful belonging to the land and not yet to its people. Not yet understood or communicated, not even really yet invented. My work has largely been to communicate this vision and to invent the way to see it.”
—Colin McCahon, Painter, 1966


di/VISION-Marksburg Castle, Germany

Let’s move on to the “di/VISION” series, in which perspective is fundamental. You reference how architecture interacts with natural surroundings, but as depicted in these images the interaction often seems ungainly.
This work grew from a series of sophisticated travel snaps and the need to take photographs as I travelled around various cities—apart from the fact that they appeal to me on a visual level. However, they reference the camera frame, what we place in it and what we leave out. The two images relate with a disjunctive gestalt that also holds a visual impact. As you point out, when we build structures that reach into the sky it appears that we cut ungainly holes in a heaven that was once complete, but in fact we block off the light and the holes in the fabric are actually the buildings themselves.

“Acute” is another series that speaks to how architecture and environment co-exist in an almost competitive sense.
Again, it’s an ongoing and unresolved relationship. They are such great structures, and yet they defy the right angle, which was so named because it was the perfect angle to create a building with four sides. Some of the sites came about because of difficult topography, and this was the only space left to build on. The more I look at architecture, the more fascinated I am with the concept of living walls, where the wall is covered with living plants. Acute sites site would make amazing living walls.


When Light Turns to Dust-Artifact #20

I find the “When Light Turns to Dust” series particularly intriguing. It’s described on your website as “a series of photographs created from discarded negatives where the silver image has been eroded and replaced with embedded dirt and dust.” Do you consider these found images, in which you are functioning more or less as an archaeologist bringing these abstract images to light? And have you manipulated these in any way or printed them straight?
Other than to print the works with a large black area—the negatives were placed on a 5x7 glass neg carrier, and the area outside of the negative became part of the work—there is no manipulation. As there was no silver left to see the original image, the orientation of the negative was purely on aesthetic grounds. I did feel like an archaeologist finding, cataloguing and printing the images. It related very much to the "Evidence from the Religion of Technology" series. [color photograms] The negatives were so badly disintegrated that it was difficult to work out what they were.

There is a hell of a lot of personal stuff in these images. My wife and I had lived in the same house for 28 years, we had two great kids, I had established a fantastic organic vegetable garden and orchard, built onto the house in a unique way, and had a fully tenured academic position at the art school. There seemed to be a glowing light in what I was doing. Then when I found these disintegrating negatives under the house (where they had been festering away for years) it all fell to pieces. My marriage broke up, I sold the house and garden, I gave up my position, my best friend died of a brain tumour. The light I had once known had truly turned to dust. But I have since learned that if you are open to the Tao, light is more resilient than this. Like a forest after a fierce fire, it can grow again in even more surprising and rewarding ways. I fell in love, moved to Melbourne and changed direction completely.


Aporian Emulsions-Alchemic symbol

That openness to serendipity or fate or whatever you want to call it seems fundamental to so many of your projects.
The element of chance has always been a key factor in my work. When weird things happen, let them happen—but you have to be open to them. One strange experience was when I was using alchemic symbols in the “Aporian Emulsions” work (alternative emulsions selectively painted onto a base, usually paper, in alchemic motifs). I was walking on a beach and found a book wet with rain on an old, equally wet coat. The book turned out to be printed in 1893. It was a reprint of the original text—Hermetic Arcanum [a key work of 17th century alchemy]. Ultimately, it was this book that brought Tess Edwards, my new partner and I, together. (We now live at the Baldessin Press in St. Andrews, Victoria, Australia.) Tess and I worked on a series for which I would photocopy the pages of the book onto rag paper, paint the alchemic symbol on with a Van Dyke Brown emulsion, and create a photogram image. I would then post it to Tess, who would paint into it, leaving various areas of the symbol and text exposed. As yet, we have not had the chance to show this body of work.

For one so keenly attuned to and wedded to organic processes, how do you feel about digital?
Digital is an exciting expansion of the great analog vocabulary we already have. Like many other photographers, I initially perceived it as a bit of a gimmick, and I never thought it would be able to match traditional chemical-based processes. But Photoshop allows image enhancement to a degree you can never achieve in a darkroom with an enlarger. Whereas silver salts grow in a way quite similar to the organic expanding cells of a leaf, the CCD is basically the same as a solar cell we use to generate electricity, so in that way it is green technology. However, digital technology has subverted many of the syntaxes of traditional photography that I identified with. Take the black border that denoted the whole frame, nothing but the frame, etc. Now you can pop a black border around any image in a few clicks of the mouse.


Evidence from the Religion of Technology

How do your educational activities intertwine with your photography?
There has always been a very close connection. When I was learning about traditional photography I had a great book by Duane Michaels that had a technical section in the back. He was really open and not only gave basic photographic info but an insight into how he worked. It was a great help and inspiration to me, and I have looked to use this as a model. I strongly believe in humanity that includes sharing information that one discovers rather than using it for personal power. While to some degree it demystifies the work, it offers assistance to others on a similar journey.

In 1983 I had the opportunity to establish the photographic section at the School of Art at Otago Polytechnic. The section grew into the second-largest in the school and included BFA and MFA students. The department was exciting because, like my own work, the students were encouraged to explore all meanings of photography. Unfortunately, art schools all over the world have been overrun with administrators who only create more administration for the academic staff, who then deal with the stress by fobbing off the students. The formula goes like this: double the number of students, halve the number of lecturers, triple the administration and cut the budget by a quarter. When students pay huge fees, they expect to pass, and the onus is on the lecturer to get them through rather than the student to engage in a critical manner and do the work. If you fail a student, the administration wants to know why. I hear the same story from colleagues in New Zealand, Australia, Britain, Scotland, France and the USA. The critical creative spirit gets lost in the meetings, manuals and forms of administration.

Now I teach at a much lower level where there is little administration and I can direct more energy into my own work. I now feel more honest to the students. From time to time I run landscape workshops where we go out to isolated places miles from civilization, where we camp, share experiences, and work with the natural rhythms of light from the sun and moon. We use digital and film to apply the basics, experiment with new ideas and techniques, and give critical feedback. As they leave, students ask why they can’t get this kind of instruction at art school.


The Green Room-Image 18

Ultimately, is photography for you something of a mythical process?
Yes. Landscape photography often gets painted as predictable and a bit of a yawn, but when it contains real visual intensity, it evokes an intriguing mythology. Even the mundane places we are familiar with can set the scene for events of epic proportions—all the viewer needs is imagination. There need not be a specific mythology in the work, just the feeling of a mythology; we need a different set of senses than just our head. The images that intrigue me the most are those I don’t understand.

[I profiled Godman for the March 2008 issue of Black & White. Expand your consciousness by visiting his inspiring and thought-provoking website: http://www.lloydgodman.net.]

Edward Sturr: Urban Modernist
Just as the fabled “New York School” of street photographers visually defined Gotham throughout the 1940s and ’50s, so did the “Chicago School” document life on the streets of the Windy City in the 1960s. But whereas the former sprang mainly from the social-humanist mold of the Photo League, the latter were products of Chicago’s Institute of Design, which had its roots firmly planted in the detached modernism of the Bauhaus. One such photographer was Chicago native Edward Sturr, whose 1960s images of the city are charged with an expressionist power comprised of angular compositions, bold contrasts and beguiling thematic irony. After moving to Kansas in 1974, Sturr taught photography for more than two decades at Kansas State University. While his personal work transitioned from gritty urban images to elegant, hand-colored landscapes, he retains a close emotional attachment to the black-and-white imagery that initially defined him.


Edward Sturr

Do you remember your first camera?
My first camera was a simple box "Donald Duck" camera that was given to me at 
about age eight. I remember taking a picture of my older brother throwing a pocketknife 
at the ground and the resulting photograph showing the knife in midair. I thought that was terrific. Years later my father bought me a 35mm Ansco
 rangefinder camera. I read the instructions and then used it to take informal, available-light photographs for my school yearbook. Shortly after that I built a darkroom and made 
black-and-white prints, learning the process pretty much on my own. About that time I bought my first 35mmm SLR camera and started doing street photography.

How long did it take you to develop a personal style?
It took about a year of intense “field work.” My feeling about style 
is that it’s not just a result of technical knowledge and skill, though that
 is necessary, but rather a reflection of the person behind the camera
, with all of the individual’s idiosyncratic tastes, past experiences, and 
sensitivities, not to mention mental and physical capabilities. Given
 extended production, personal style will flow as naturally as the 
character of one’s handwriting. When I taught photography it would
 take only a few months before I was able to identify who made which
 photographs even in the largest classes. This is not to say, however,
 that style by itself automatically confers quality or aesthetic significance.



What was the biggest challenge in finding your voice?
The challenge for me was not how to create a style, since that is basically
 an intuitive, non-verbal, right-hemisphere response, but rather to be 
in the right locations that would be conducive for my personal photographic explorations. It was largely a matter of just walking and observing until some activity on the street would trigger an 
internal switch to start looking through the viewfinder and begin 
shooting. It was an intuitive response that just seemed right, and 
for whatever reason, framing and composing was quick and effortless, 
unlike any other art media I had studied. Facing people on the street with my camera never caused a bit of concern nor hesitation to shoot, though I’m sure that much of what I did could never be done today without first having a model release.




Montreal, 1967

How would you characterize your 1960s street photography?
I was trying to express a personal response to a particular environment and its subjects in a way that was visually
 satisfying and possessed emotive dimensions. Form and content, each important and inseparable, were experienced as a new thing in itself, i.e., a particular black-and-white photographic print. The experience of a photograph as a print has always been very important to me.
 Regarding content, my work was in many a natural byproduct
 and reflection of the 1960s, a troubled decade, to be sure. We had the Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations, Vietnam War protests, rioting at the Democratic convention in Chicago, deep-seated racial conflict, to name just a few of the political and 
social upheavals. It was a tense time, and the ambiance was frequently angst, especially in the big city.



How did the physical and emotional character of the city of Chicago influence your work?
The character of Chicago in the 1960s, and particularly the old town 
and the near North Side, where I lived and photographed, surely influenced many aspects of my work, some of which I still cannot describe. Housing was inexpensive, often gritty, with a mix of cultures and populations, and laced with artists. I lived in more than a few apartments. One was an old, converted cobbler shop; another
 was an art studio (and later a co-op art gallery) above a storefront. Rent was affordable, even if I had to check my shoes for roaches in the morning. Yet this was the city, and perfect for my photography, 
however uncomfortable, rough and tough, and even dangerous it could be
 at times. Once, while walking in a marginal area with my camera under my jacket so it wouldn’t be tempting to thugs, I was followed by a 
slow-moving car. It suddenly stopped and two men jumped out on each side of me. One drew a handgun and aimed it at me; the other flashed a police badge and asked what was under my coat. Raising my arms, I told them it was only my camera, whereupon I was told to “get out of the neighborhood.” Today, this area is hardly recognizable, with fine restaurants, bistros, expensive shops and apartments that even now I could hardly afford. Moreover, where have all the artists gone?




Grant Park, Chicago, 1968

The subjects in many of your photographs seem to be connected and yet disconnected from one another. Is this something you’ve thought about much, or does it proceed intuitively?
That disconnect is found in a number of my photographs. I’ve always felt that while people appear 
unaware of each other and disconnected, which creates a sense of alienation, they are all on the same stage. I can see the relationships
 even if they can’t, so there is a tension that’s created. The viewer can see in my photos the disconnect or the threads that tie people together...or
 both. It’s interesting that one can live in a city apartment for years
 with people living ten feet above, below, and to the sides 
of you, yet you never ever talk to them. Now that’s a disconnect.

Your pictures often feature one or more elements that dominate the frame visually, but which tend to be thematically ambiguous.
The ambiguity allows, perhaps even forces, the viewer to fill in the blanks and by so
 doing participate in the visual process. Such images are open-ended in that 
regard, but hopefully are satisfying enough on their own terms to justify their existence.


Do you perceive the world and/or people as fundamentally mysterious and unexplainable?
Yes, I do. Actually, many of the most important aspects of our
 world are not fully understood, but that’s
 what makes it all so interesting.






Chicago, 1965

The visual complexity and abstraction of these pictures is balanced by what I would call an unsentimental compassion.
I was deliberate about the inclusion of those
 elements, but rejected total abstraction while also avoiding any content that was maudlin or sentimental. My response was to the visual environment, but also to the human element. The integration of the two in a finished photographic print was my utmost priority and satisfaction.



Your work has a fluid yet discordant visual rhythm reminiscent of avant-garde jazz artists like Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman. Are you influenced by music, and do you try to impart a musically inspired rhythm to your images?
Jazz was my musical choice as a listener even while in high school, 
though I’m not sure that there was any conscious attempt to include
 musical structure in my photographic work. I did, however, intentionally create
 a visual structure that can be considered discordant, e.g.,
 figures cut off at the waist, people in the corner of a frame, objects
 and things off balance, etc.

You studied with giants like Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind at Chicago’s Institute of Design. What did you learn from them?
Callahan made me aware that everything in a photograph
 counts, and that the first thing we experience when seeing a photograph 
is the visual gestalt. From Siskind I learned that the photograph is first a print, an end unto itself and not primarily a “window to the world.” A number of other photographers were influential in my development, with
 bits and pieces making their impact from both formal and informal 
experience. From Eugene
 Smith, the importance of the craft of printing; from Cartier-Bresson, the
 need for sensitivity and the readiness to react to the flow of life that comes together within the camera viewfinder for only a fraction of a second; from Robert Frank, that form and technique can seriously impact content.






Chicago street, 1968

Have you primarily supported yourself through teaching?
Yes, teaching has been my primary source of income. Very few of my 1960s photographs sold back then. The subject matter was not considered “attractive” enough to hang in one’s home, as photography had not yet attained its full status as an art form. Income from sales of my work is now considerably 
improved, though still not sufficient to be my sole source. My example is not unlike many photographers who are oriented more towards personal expression in photography.
 No complaints, it’s just a statement of fact and the result of life choices one makes.






Has teaching photography informed your own work?
Teaching helped me sharpen the discipline and craft of darkroom
 printing. After all, as one does, so one teaches, and vice versa.

Is there a philosophy or outlook that you have tried to communicate to your students?
Yes, some basic principles regarding the creative process—that progress as a productive artist results from personal commitment and hard work; that the artist should expect and tolerate frustration and even failure; that one must develop one’s craft but
 understand that it is only the means to expression and not the end;
 and that doing original work in any medium is rarely comfortable, upsetting to some, and requires one to take chances. It’s a risky business.



Are you happy to be identified with the “Chicago school” of 1960s street photographers?
Yes, although I wasn’t even aware that I was part of it until many years later. Aaron Siskind
 was a visiting artist were I was teaching (years after he retired), and said to me, “Hey, Ed, do they (the faculty) know that you were part of the Chicago group of street photographers back then?”





Chicago L, 1960s

Are you still doing black-and-white street photography?
Not presently, as I live in a town that is not conducive 
to street photography. Having said that, I did some street
 work when I first moved here and in other locations, and I have recently made some limited-edition prints of my 1960s negatives.
 Unfortunately, my favorite paper that I used back then—Agfa double-weight fiber with a glossy surface—is no longer manufactured.
 Such beautiful paper. I feel sad for its demise and treasure the little I have remaining.


Do you feel you’ve expressed all that you wanted to in that genre?
Well, I’m not sure whether the well has run dry or not in that genre. Maybe not if given the right environment. Though if I did return to street photography, I’m sure there would be some major differences in the content 
of my work.


Do you think photography has as much impact as it once did in terms of getting people to think about the human condition?
The answer to that is best left to someone other than myself, like a critic or historian who has a worldview of photography that I just don't have.

(Visit www.josephbellows.com/artists/edward-sturr to see more of Edward Sturr's documentary work and/or purchase a copy of his book, “The Photographs of Edward Sturr: 1961-1970.” To see his color landscape imagery, which is radically different in conception and execution, visit www.prairielight.com.)

Andreas Gefeller: Subjective Realities
Düsseldorf-based photographer Andreas Gefeller deftly manipulates viewers’ perceptions of visual “truth” in discrete yet complementary series that reflect a multiplicity of themes and concerns—nuclear disasters, mankind’s environmental hegemony, and global transformations of public and personal space, to name but a few. In so doing, he reveals intellectual and spiritual truths about ourselves and or relationship with the environments we adopt and adapt. His latest series, titled “Supervisions,” pushes this aesthetic to a surprisingly disorienting degree.


Andreas Gefeller

What drew you to photography?
When I was a kid, I was very interested in astronomy. I had a telescope and took many photos of the stars, which I developed myself. In the beginning, I thought I did this for scientific reasons. But I soon realized that I was more fascinated by the possibilities of collecting light to make invisible things visible. And I started to take photos of other things—all that stuff that people photograph when they get a camera: houses, flowers, people. But I retained the idea that photography helps to understand how human perception works in the mind. Later, during my studies at the University of Essen, I again started to make time-exposure photographs, which resulted in my series “Soma.”

How has your environment affected your approach and choice of subject matter?
I think everything affects everything. The way that landscapes are destroyed by industrial buildings and by houses for people who like to live in a “natural” environment—not to mention the highways that displace natural landscapes so that people can drive back and forth to work—makes me angry. Although in Düsseldorf, where I live, it’s still quite tolerable compared to other places in the world, like Asia, the United States and other developing countries.

Can you briefly discuss the inspiration for “Supervisions”?
To be honest, the inspiration came by accident: A friend and I were having a picnic on the banks of the Rhine River. It was a nice day, and we were a little bored. When my friend felt asleep, I started playing with my film camera and made dozens of photos of the ground. When I combined cut-out images from the contact sheets into a single collage, I realized that with this method I could “fly”—not literally, of course, but photographically. Things on the ground seemed to become smaller, while the distance to the earth seemed to become greater. That was the start of “Supervisions.”


Berlin, 2006

In refining that process, you began to image one square meter at a time with the camera a few feet above the ground, and then digitally stitched all the individual images into one large collective image?
Yes, that’s exactly how I make them. The height from which I shoot can vary, depending on the situation. Outdoors, it’s up to three meters off the ground. Indoors, it’s lower.

I’ve read that you make up to thousands of exposures for each work. How long does this take? And is there anything else involved in the process, either at the capture stage or when you combine the images in the computer?
My latest work shows the ground plan of the Academy of Arts in Düsseldorf, for which I took nearly 10,000 photos (maybe more, I didn’t count them) during a period of some months. But I swear, that will be the last time that I make such a huge work. I was very happy when I had finished it! That image was an exception, however. Normally, the photographing process takes a few hours to one or two days. To stitch the photos together takes longer. But this is difficult to say precisely, as I would go crazy if I didn’t take breaks and then return to the process a few days later.

The effect seems to be that they are taken from much higher up, which plays with the viewer’s sense of spatial depth and transforms our sense of place and space. The subject matter itself is flat and thus lacks visual depth, yet your technique creates what I might call a false sense of depth.
I agree. In fact, even though I made the photographs, I sometimes can’t believe that they were in fact taken from such a low height. In this, I’m influenced by my love of astronomy. Looking at the surfaces of other planets makes me wonder what it would be like if I was there. But it’s mainly technical aspect of astronomy that helps me create my “Supervisions” images. Pictures of the moon, the earth and other planets are often made by dozens of single satellite photos. The satellite circles the planet many times from a lower height, but the result looks as if the distance from the planet was much greater. This is the same effect as in “Supervisions.”


Beach, Domburg, 2006

What’s the thematic intention behind this spatial deception?
This deception itself is the main subject of the work: On one hand, the photos are true in every detail; on the other, the perspective is just a construction. Is my work just an illusion? No, of course not. Everything you see in my pictures was there, nothing was deleted and nothing was added. Is my work just documentation? No, the perspective is completely unreal! This produces a kind of visual “irritation” for viewers that is designed to get them thinking about what lies beyond the surface appearance of our environments, whether they are natural or man-made. It’s not only the visual perspective that is false, but also the time perspective, which produces another kind of “irritation.” At first sight, viewers might think that these constructed images were taken in one short moment (like 1/125th second), but they eventually realize that this is incorrect. The actual image-capture stage takes hours, sometimes longer. Ultimately, the “Supervisions” series lies somewhere between documentary and fictional photography—maybe it’s fictional documentation or documentary fiction. By doing this, my series plays with human perception and the possibilities of digital photography, and with the question of where reality ends and fiction starts.

That last point links “Supervisions” to your previous series.
Correct. “Halbwertszeiten,” an early series from 1996, touches on the subject of what is visible and what is invisible. The photos were taken near Chernobyl, where thousand of people had to leave their homes because of the nuclear catastrophe. Radioactivity is still everywhere, but you cannot see or photograph it. Yet just by knowing where the photos were taken, you can sense radioactivity in the pictures. And the images in “Soma,” although made with film and without digital intervention, seem to have been generated on a computer. In fact, the “Soma” images reveal our world with more reality than our eyes are able to capture. At night, we see everything in shades of gray. But the camera is able to capture the colors that we cannot see. In this case, our eyes show a false picture of the world, not the camera.


Tree Nursery, Neuss, 2005

What do the “Supervisions” images say about the environments we create for ourselves?
If you look at the works carefully, you will note that many of them were taken at places where man has put everything in rows. This is one of the most provocative characteristics of modern man: arranging things in regimented, strict order to try and achieve control. But control over what? We sometimes seem to treat nature as if it’s our biggest enemy. In the image “Tree Nursery,” the way the trees are situated is completely unnatural, yet the trees try to assert their own character. It’s one of numerous examples of how man tries to manipulate his environment while deluding himself that he’s improving it.

How are these environments modifying our everyday lives?
The border between nature and urban spaces is vanishing. Nature is becoming more and more artificial as modern architecture, garden design, fun parks, etc., attempt to simulate nature. I wonder how upcoming generations will deal with nature. Will they be able to make a fire or catch a fish? Will they know what a fish looks like? Disturbing questions. Another of my concerns is how our lives are controlled and organized by our built environments. For example, “Ceiling” shows everything that sustains a typical office hidden away above the ceiling: water pipes, electricity and gas lines, IT cables, etc. These resemble the blood vessels in our bodies, an indication that buildings are becoming more like humans. Many buildings have even started “thinking”—and perhaps contributing to humans turning into robots. This image makes visible how man is more and more dependent on technical support rather than his own capabilities.


Ceiling 3, Düsseldorf, 2007

Although people are literally absent from your images, their mediating presence is suggested not only through the way in which urban geography is laid out, but by what they leave behind—the artwork in “Graffiti,” the footprints in “Sandtracks.” Yet there is something disturbing about showing the absence of people in places meant for the masses.
I too find this disturbing, although I’m not quite sure why. Maybe because I exclude people in a rather ominous way? My photos never give the impression that people have just gone away for a few moments and will soon return. It’s more like the images were made at a point far in the future after man has left the earth. It’s kind of like documenting a modern archeology: Viewers can read the tracks on the ground and wonder what happened, and who was there. In the case of “Sandtracks,” they can also read the brand names of shoes, which provide even more information: gender, age, social origin and income. This image is a metaphor of the Internet and the modern world, in which everything is connected and information is easily accessible. We all leave our personal footprints by shopping online and paying with credit cards, using our cell phones, etc.

How do you choose which locations to photograph?
Sometimes I have an idea in mind and look for the place by making phone calls and searching the Internet. Sometimes, especially when I’m making a trip in a foreign country, I just take walks, get inspiration and find the locations by lucky accident.

Do you have a sense beforehand of how the finished image will look?
Because it's such an effort to realise a work, I normally do many tests before I start. Therefore, moments of disappointment are luckily quite rare.

Are you ever surprised by the final results?
Sometimes, yes. And that’s what makes it fun. By stitching the photos together, I start flying. The longer I work on a photo the more I depart from the ground. Certain optical characteristics are often unforeseeable, as in “Swimming Pool.” You can make dozens of tests beforehand, but you can never know how the finished photo will look because the surface of the water is always changing. Incidentally, that was one of the most exciting and exhausting works I did.


Sandtracks, Miami, 2008

The seams in some of these images are more pronounced than in others. Does it matter to you one way or another?
It does. I think it’s part of the artistic work. Technically, it would be easy to eliminate all the seams. But I sometimes need these so-called “mistakes” to give the viewer hints how to read and understand the works. Works that have seams help viewers to understand the works without seams.

When the seams are visible, it calls attention to the artifice of the process, which further complicates the perception of what is real and what is purported to be real. Do you enjoy playing with that dividing line?
Yes, sure. I think one of the most exciting aspects of these images is that they have two sides, or two layers: At first sight, from a greater distance, the picture looks like a “normal” photo and viewers think they understand it. But the closer they get, the more irritating the work becomes. It sometimes happens that someone stands in front of a work and says, “Ah, great. Trees in the snow taken from above. How did you get there? did you use a balloon?” But when he gets closer, he realizes he was wrong. (The trees in “Tree Nursery” are actually taken from below, and the white background is the cloudy sky). But the awareness of being wrong does not help. In many cases, it takes a long time until the viewer really understands what he or she is looking at. In other words, more information (the viewer gets closer and sees more details) sometimes results in more irritation (and less insight)!

(To see more of Andreas Gefeller's beautiful and thought-provoking imagery, please visit his website: www.andreasgefeller.com.)

Susan Burnstine: Between Worlds
Finding the right camera to express one’s vision is a challenge that every photographer must deal with at some point. When conventional cameras proved unsatisfactory for Susan Burnstine, however, she simply decided to build her own in order to channel the haunting, dreamlike imagery that has won her widespread critical acclaim over the past several years. The Los Angeles-based photographer utilizes an array of homemade plastic cameras in the creation of an ongoing, three-part body of work that fluctuates between various states of reality: “On Waking Dreams” (dreaming/subconscious), “Between” (sleeping/unconscious) and “Flight” (waking/conscious). Yet so confidently and elegantly is this vision realized that one is barley aware of the mediating presence of the camera. The images seem to spring straight from Burnstine’s psyche to the viewer’s.


Susan Burnstine

Which artists—photographers or otherwise—have been most important to your creative development?
As a child, I was most influenced by the Impressionists. At the age of eight, I tore pages out from books on the great Impressionists and taped their images on my bedroom walls. Monet, Seurat, Cassatt, Renoir, Degas—my room was wallpapered with their greatest works. Once I started studying photography, the first photographers who made the deepest impressions were Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Helen Levitt. In time, the Pictorialists deeply influenced my work, but it was the Impressionists that first influenced the way that I see.

Did you teach yourself the technical aspects of the medium?
Mostly. I studied photography in high school for four years. During that time I assisted a commercial/wedding/portrait photographer in Chicago. But when it comes to all the technical aspects of making homemade cameras, I’m self-taught.

How important was this period of apprenticeship?
I learned a great deal about the business of making photography. So much so that it became a detriment to my creative process much too early, as the message became that it was all about making money rather than art.

Why didn’t you go straight into a photographic career after graduating from college?
I had to take a step away, since I only aspired to make art and did not see how I could achieve that goal at that stage of my life.


Bridge to Nowhere (On Waking Dreams)

So you went down other career paths—filmmaker, performer and writer. Did any of them influence your photographic aesthetic?
Absolutely. I tend to have a more cinematic approach and try and tell a story with each image. When working with my subjects during the series “Between,” I’d frequently walk them through basic acting exercises and mediations in attempt to put them in the moment and give them room to get in touch with where they really were, rather than trying to direct them in a way that I thought served the image.

What prompted your return to photography?
After a series of events, starting with my mother’s death and dealing with an illness of my own, the illusions of living and working in Hollywood lost their appeal. I was burned out and wanted to do something that really meant something to me. I hadn’t seriously photographed anything in years, but always held onto my first real camera, a Canon A-1 my parents gave me when I was eleven. I started photographing my best friend’s children all the time. My friend liked nearly everything I shot and told everyone she knew to hire me as a photographer. Within a year, I had a headshot, portrait and occasion photography business. It was satisfying for a short time, but once again, those old demons came crawling back and the business of photography soured me. It was then that I started getting an overwhelming itch to create art.

Are there any points of connection between your commercial and fine art work?
Not really. One pays the bills and the other feeds my soul.


Suspend (Between)

Why did you start building homemade cameras?
I wanted to recreate how I see the world through my eyes in an authentic manner. Conventional, prefabricated cameras simply could not emulate my vision. Additionally, I wanted an original style or fingerprint that could not be found with standard cameras. For many months, I focused on toy camera photography due to its dreamy, Pictorialist style. But the look and style soon became repetitive, and I became bored by their limitations. I began tearing these cameras apart piece-by-piece, modifying them to photograph close-ups, telephoto, etc. Then I started rebuilding them from the inside out. This process taught me how to create a rudimentary camera, and I subsequently made my own box cameras and my own homemade lenses out of random household objects, molded plastic and rubber.

How have the imperfections of these cameras helped to define your style?
The cameras have only one or two shutter speeds and one aperture, and they frequently break, since they’re mostly held together by Duco cement, photo tape and glue. Having to work around these limitations has forced me to learn how to harness light in a way that I would not have learned with a conventional camera. It’s also taught me more about all aspects of photography than anything else.

Many photographers have jumped onto the plastic/toy camera bandwagon in recent years. How does your imagery differ?
My images are not from conventional, prefabricated toy cameras. I make my own cameras and lenses so that they have a one-of-a-kind look and style that toy cameras cannot achieve.

You’ve written that you suffered from childhood nightmares that led you to equate sleep with mortality. Can you expand on that as it relates to your artistic vision?
As a child, I suffered from severe nightmares that frequently stayed with me for days. Often I would see an image or symbol in my waking life but would not know if it was something real or from my dreams. Over the years, I’ve found that there can be a very thin line between dreams and reality, and so I made a deliberate choice to convey that line between black and white, yin and yang, and the conscious and unconscious worlds.


In Passage (On Waking Dreams)

The idea of photographing one's dreams is fascinating, and brings to mind the Surrealists, especially filmmakers like Luis Buñuel. However, the original Surrealist artists privileged the philosophical content of their work above its form. Your work seems more evenly balanced between the two. Any comment?
Besides the subject of dream content, I don’t see my work as having much to do with the Surrealist filmmaking movement. Buñuel’s take on surrealism was often based in the irrational. My images have a rational interpretation and are based more on Jungian dream interpretation than the Surrealist movement.

Surrealism was also above all else a revolutionary movement, though that aspect has been largely forgotten today. Do you see your work at all in this light? I ask because photography is rooted in the temporal, but your images superimpose a metaphysical layer onto that. Is part of your approach rooted in a concern or predilection for conceptual subversion?
There is a rich metaphysical layer to the work, although that’s a tough subject to discuss. But its inclusion is both conscious and unconscious. If you’re asking if I intentionally keep a distance from conceptual thought, the answer is essentially yes. It’s my hope that my work can be experienced in a primal, emotional manner prior to intellect and conceptual thought setting in.

Is your use of dreamlike imagery also a way of achieving a kind of spiritual or emotional liberation?
Yes, absolutely.


Run (Flight)

The mood in your images is always ambiguous; do you consciously try to keep the tone from becoming too dark?
Yes … and no. The content of the image always dictates the tone. I never outwardly or consciously direct what comes out from a subject or event. I can only react to what I see through my own eyes by clicking the shutter at a time that speaks to me. It’s my way in life and in art to always find the balance of positive and negative in everything. I suspect that’s why the images never become overly dark, when they very well could. The interpretation tends to be left open, because in essence that’s who I am and how I try and see the world around me.

The figures in your “On Waking Dreams” series are seen mainly in silhouette and at a distance, lending them more of a symbolic than individual presence.
Your interpretation is correct. The silhouette is about solitude, the struggle of being alone in the conscious and unconscious human condition and the inward and outward struggle of either going forward or back. Additionally, the figures represent the archetypal images I have been haunted by in my dreams for years—many of which are silhouette figures.

You often place these figures in corridor-like settings: staircases, bridges, roads and the like. This gives them a feeling of being in transit, whether physical or spiritual. Frequently, they’re moving towards or away from an area of light, which seems to imply transcendence or rebirth.
Absolutely. My work is often about the question, choice, and/or decision to move forward or back in the physical and spiritual realm.

You speak about your work in terms of metaphors, but your imagery isn’t didactic in the sense that you try to impose a particular interpretation. How important is it to accord viewers this kind of freedom, and are you surprised at some of the things people read into your photographs?
I find this essential to making an image. I don’t want to impose my personal interpretations on each picture to the point that it’s the only possible perspective, for fear that viewers cannot have their own experiences. I very much enjoy hearing people’s reactions, as they can be vastly different from my own. Many have jokingly said that my images are a type of Rorschach test, especially within the series “Between.”


Grasp (Between)

There’s a more direct engagement with people as individuals in the “Between” series. Although our view of them is still obscured by blur, silhouetting, textures, etc., we are invited to identify with them on a more emotional level. What triggered this difference in approach?
“Between” is a very personal series for me. I photographed subjects, but in essence it is a self-portrait about a very difficult subject and time in my life. The work is all based in emotions that can be interpreted as positive or negative depending on individual perspectives. The previous series, “On Waking Dreams,” was based on my own conscious and unconscious world, but it frequently applied to mass consciousness of dreams and metaphors. In other words, one series is about looking at the world from the outside in, while the other is about looking at the world from the inside out. What triggered the difference? Dealing with the tragic loss of my mother, the overwhelming fallout of 9-11 and facing my own mortality due to a health concern. Additionally, I do not like repeating the same content from series to series. Each has to pose different psychological and/or technical challenges, or else there is no reason for shooting another.

You’ve described “Between” as evoking the space and time that exists between living and dying. What other themes or ideas are you trying to express through it?
I am one that never sees anything as simple as black and white. I believe that what is most important is what lies between the two. One might say the series is about living within shades of gray.

Do you worry about exhausting the creative possibilities of a soft-focus, blurry aesthetic? Can you foresee experimenting with sharper-edged imagery in future?
I think it’s natural for an artist not to want to become a parody of themselves. I will continue working with homemade cameras for as long as they continue to allow me to expand and grow as a person and artist. I know many viewers prefer to easily identify an artist by a certain style, and that has been a concern, but I don’t like to put limitations on the tools I use. What’s most important is the content and finding the correct tool to convey what I’m trying to say. My first love was documentary photography. Who knows, I might do a 180-degree turn to conventional lenses sometime.


Threshold (Flight)

Do you find much visual inspiration in Los Angeles, or is it hard to find the kind of images you want?
I prefer nondescript, vast, timeless locations, so Los Angeles proper poses a serious challenge. This last series was not dependent on visual surroundings—part of the reason for this shift was because I got to a point with the previous series that I had shot much of what I found evocative about the city. My feelings about visual inspiration in Los Angeles go in ebbs and flows. Currently, I am mildly uninspired by my surroundings, but I suspect that has to do with being in a transition from one series to another and trying to define exactly what I want to say more than the city and atmosphere that surrounds me.

Is the light in Los Angeles difficult to work with?
The light can be tricky since it’s so brilliant and harsh most days. I prefer to shoot in the shade or a cloudy atmosphere, but those days are few and far between in Los Angeles, even in winter. But there can be exceptions. The series “Between” was shot during May to November 2007, and part of my challenge was shooting during the harshest sunlight of the year.

Many of your photographs border on abstraction, but for the most part your subject matter is rooted in the representational.
I don’t like to put limits on directions and subject matter for future work. The emotional content determines the direction for each individual image. It’s hard to say where that will lead me with the next series, since I like to work without predetermined limitations or expectations.

(I wrote about Susan Burnstine for the September 2008 issue of B&W. To embark on further explorations of her otherworldly imagery, please visit www.susanburnstine.com.)

Marc Ullom: Time and Transformation
At the heart of Marc Ullom’s photographic odyssey is a fascination with how we negotiate our sense of self through our bodies and our environment, a process that unfolds on both the conscious and unconscious levels. This dynamic is most powerfully evoked in his “Transience of Self” series, comprised of elegant and ominous self-portraits taken in derelict buildings in advanced states of decay. Ullom’s photographs raise challenging questions about who and what and why we are. Answers are optional.


Marc Ullom

How did you become interested in photography?
I first picked up a camera when I was about three years old, turned it around, looked down the lens and took my first self-portrait. I still have that photograph. It wasn’t until the “Transience of Self” series that I began shooting self-portraits seriously, however. In 1985 I became interested in photography as a hobby, and soon thereafter I was able to purchase my first SLR, a Canon EOS 650. It was with me all the way through high school, and the experience led me to consider pursuing photography as a major in college. In short, it was a series of disjointed experiences that built upon my love of creating crystalline moments out of time. Besides, I couldn’t stand the idea of a normal desk job.

What specific aspects of photography make it your preferred medium? In other words, how does it allow you to communicate themes and ideas in ways that painting or sculpture, for example, are unable to?
In the beginning, I was simply fascinated with the idea of capturing things—of seeing in new ways and of framing the world, boxing it up, taking a piece of it and putting my mark upon it. I didn’t know that at first, but I did know my interest in photography and of looking at photographs was not a fleeting one. In college, I was obsessed with the darkroom, printing hundreds of images each semester, performing endless toning experiments, and shooting my own work in addition to class work. One day I realized that creating images didn’t feel like work—it felt like the greatest fulfillment of what I was meant to do. That sounds dramatic, but it’s true. In dealing with the more traditional methods of self expression, I always felt stifled, like my hand could not fulfill what my mind’s eye desired. And so, with little innate talent in the traditional fine arts, I was happy to stick with photography and became fully immersed in the challenge of making the little box work like I wanted it to.

You’ve written that you cannot make a photographic image from memory, as you can with painting or sculpture. Yet doesn’t photography lend itself to suggesting memory more effectively than either of those mediums?
I don’t know if it lends itself more readily to suggesting memory, but I know that what photography has always done is control time. Yes, it records, reduces and separates small slices of time from the fluid experience of existence, but we tend to associate those two-dimensional representations as a fact of place or time. With that being said, I realize that writers and critics can argue it either way. My use of photography in the past was linked to objects, places and structures, but over the past five years or so it has evolved to dealing with the emotional connection of being in the places I photograph, whether it’s a landscape or self-portrait. It’s an important distinction. My work has taken a fundamental turn: It has moved from what the camera does so easily, recording the fact of a place in a beautiful way, to working in conjunction with my ideas, my emotional connections, and most importantly, my state of mind to create work that is intended to be something more than the individual parts.


Exploration #94

Has your environment influenced your work? I sense a certain fascination with decay, which often seems to be the case with photographers from the Midwest and eastern regions of the country.
I believe that environment always influences the work an artist produces. I grew up on the East Coast, and spent much of my time in the country exploring old houses and other uninhabited places. You are correct that I have a fascination with spaces that have lived beyond their useful life and are being reclaimed by nature. I have not identified where that fascination comes from, but I do know that when I am fascinated with something, my interest sometimes fades when I figure out why.

What was the catalyst for the "Transience of Self" series?
This two-year project started innocently enough with a single thought: “How does the camera see my physical form compared to how I think I look?” It rapidly evolved into a more well-rounded group of ideas that coalesced into an exploration of how our physical bodies interact with our environment, and how they change with the environment. There are many layers to how the project can be viewed, but the basic inspiration was simply wondering why I looked like I do. The initial title of the work was “Looking Out, Looking In.”

How closely, in your view, is our relationship with our environment bound up with our sense of self?
How we see ourselves is a complex blending of our childhood environments, the places we spent time around as adolescents, and those places we choose to live in as adults. These externally experiential surroundings subtly mold how we identify with our inner sense of self. The work I have created in “Transience of Self” explores both man-made and natural environments with an injection of a human form in both. The spirit of the two environments is profoundly different and intended to draw a strong response from the viewer. How all of this ends up influencing my sense of self is at once subtle and profound.


Exploration #73

Is there much of your childhood represented in the Transience imagery?
No intentionally, but I’ve always had a love of the mysterious and unknown, so a literal exploration of these spaces is tied to that interest.

Conversely, are you trying to connect somehow with your future?
I think that by coming to terms with the physical changes to my body over the course of this project I was also attempting to come to terms with my future. This acceptance of the way things are, and will be, occurred largely outside the process of making the work, mainly by thinking through the process. I realize this group of photographs will engage each viewer differently, but for me the experience helped me to feel more connected with and at the same time detached from my body.

I sense a kinship with Ralph Eugene Meatyard, to some extent visually, but primarily through a kind of secular spiritual and emotional tonality.
It’s interesting that you mention this. Arno Rafael Minkkinen, one of my mentors on the project, said some of my images reminded him of Meatyard, and it’s also interesting that I fail to see it. This is something that I am going to be looking into, as it is possible that I am merely not that familiar with Meatyard, even though I have seen quite a bit of his work. Clearly, research is needed.

The work is beautifully ambiguous and obviously lends itself to a wide range of interpretation. In your bio, you state that it involves “an observation of the transient nature of our physical form in relation to our environment.” Are you basically saying that our interpretation of self, as well as our interpretation of our environment and how the two interact, is in constant flux?
The interaction we have with our environment and with our physical form does change over time. I wrote at one point about this project being a flag planted in the river of time, a testament to those who see it in 50 years. I will be interested to see how I view the work in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, to see if it’s the keystone of my understanding of self, or if it’s merely a single block in my experience. Work can become more powerful to the photographer as time moves on, or it may lose its luster. I’m interested to see how it pans out.


Exploration #06

The interiors in which you photograph exhibit an advanced state of physical decay, which is a form of transition. Beyond providing a visual echo of the body’s physical transformation through time, are you suggesting other correlatives between our bodies and our immediate environments?
You have touched on the main intent in how the environment and the physical body interact.

Would you care to comment on some of the other narrative motifs, such as the link between past and present consciousness; or the personal journey through time and space?
The more I worked on this project, the more I became aware that the essence of who we are is so much more than our physical bodies. Maybe this isn’t news to anyone else, but it was a profound revelation to me. It was this realization that allowed me to become much more accepting of the current and future state of the body. It helped me to find my center as well. I don’t feel like I’m drifting anymore, but more like I’m anchored in an understanding of the nature of where our identity lies, and it is not, at least for me, in our physical bodies.

Your work is intended to raise questions for yourself and viewers alike about the temporal nature of existence, but without necessarily providing answers. Is it enough to just raise questions? Do you experience any frustration at not finding answers?
I definitely believe it is enough to simply ask questions. The question is the most important thing. Answers will change, and many are relative, but the question is the thing that engages the mind and creates an insatiable curiosity that leads to personal insight and understanding. I have found some answers, but those answers are mine alone. Imposing my view on the work may cheapen it for others, so it’s my intention to simply to allow the work to speak for itself, while also provide a loose starting point for interpreting the work.


Exploration #87

Did you shoot everything in a single or multiple locations? The consistency of detail and texture seems to suggest the former.
Actually, the work was created in several states and approximately four different buildings. The exterior images were photographed in New Mexico, Colorado and Utah, while the interior images were taken in Michigan and West Virginia. Thousands of miles and hundreds of hours were poured into this project. My exploration of the unknown and mysterious was a significant factor in the choice of locations.

The physical atmosphere in these photographs is somewhat ominous, like a setting in a Harold Pinter play. Also like Pinter, I think they communicate as much by what they hide as by what they reveal. Is this intentional?
Ominous is a strong word, but a legitimate one. Yes, the hinted-at environment, or the things I left out, is quite intentional and helps add to the mystery.

The figure’s nudity lends these images a provocative aspect, but it also seems to imply vulnerability.
My mentors on the series strongly suggested that I should be nude in the work. I resisted this initially, and wore shorts, but the clothing created too much cultural context, so the nude body became a necessary step to remove the last shred of separation between body and environment. It’s not intended to be provocative, but vulnerability, intimacy, raw exposure, these descriptors work better. Nevertheless, I understand that some people cannot get away from the fact that there is a nude body in the photograph.

This may be a reach, but are you also trying to convey any kind of subtext equating decay and death or sexuality?
Not at all.


Exploration #20

By imaging yourself in terms of shadows, blurs, reflections and fragments, you seem to evoke instability on a number of levels: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.
Mostly the instability of our physical form, and an exploration of the body in a constant state of flux. I can see how people may see these images as morbid or depressing, but that’s not my intent. There is a spiritual connection, as this project challenged me to carefully review my own conservative Christian upbringing, and in the end I think I understand where I came from and who I am better now because of these challenges. There is a strong connection in the work to the idea of memory and the idea that we really live in our memory, that every moment instantly becomes memory—so the mental instability you speak of can be seen as simply the constant change within our brains as we move through time and absorb our environments and experiences.

How spontaneous are these images? Are they pre-planned to any degree, or do you find yourself reacting to the physical environment at the moment of image capture?
Towards the end of the project the creation of the work was fairly spontaneous, mainly because I took so many images over the two years that the technical considerations became second nature. Self-portraiture of this nature is not easy if technique is lacking. Working in dangerous buildings without clothing requires a fair degree of methodical planning, but over time the process became more spontaneous. The post-production phase was more contemplative, in that I modified the environments through burning and dodging.

I like the tension between the images’ visual simplicity and thematic complexity, something I see in your other series as well. Do you have to think much about this balance, or does it emerge organically?
The visual balance in the work evolved organically because of my lifelong love of balance and structure in the photographic image. These visual characteristics are an innate part of who I am as a visual artist.

Have you achieved all you set out to do with this series?
I feel that I have closed the chapter on this particular body of work. I may return to it in the future, but for now I’m content to move on to another genre.

(Marc Ullom is a professional photographer and educator currently based in Michigan. A radically abridged version of this interview appeared in the June 2009 issue of B&W magazine. For more on Marc’s work, visit www.marcullom.com.)

Krzysztof Pruszkowski: Photographing What Doesn’t Exist
Initially trained as an architect, Polish-born Krzysztof Pruszkowski took up photography after moving to Paris in 1965. He did fashion, publicity and documentary work for several years before feeling the constraints of what he perceived as the expressive limitations of single images. He subsequently devised a method of extreme multiple-image creation beginning in 1975 called Photosynthesis. Inspired in part by Jacques Derrida’s concept of drawing numerous interpretations from a single text, the dense visual layering of Pruszkowski’s images is mirrored by their kaleidoscopic allusions to all manner of philosophical, cultural, sexual and political issues. His recent projects include a look at media representations of terrorists and their victims, as well as a series focused on myths of the 20th century.


Krzysztof Pruszkowski

Poland has a rich history of experimental and politically engaged photography. Although you had moved to Paris at 22, do you feel that Photosynthesis is linked to this tradition, if only in spirit?
No. I created the “total vision” concept of Photosynthesis in opposition to the dogmatic concept of the “decisive moment” formed in the middle of the 20th century by Henri Cartier-Bresson. That aesthetic became the “canon obligatoire” in photography, and it also became a nice product for the export of French culture and lifestyle. The paradoxical fact is that the exceptional quality of Cartier-Bresson’s reportage, and the quality of documentary photography in France in general, brought photography to a standstill—like painting in the 19th century—and inhibited French photographers from developing a modern vision.

Leaving aside Cartier-Bresson, have you been influenced or inspired by any other photographers?
I’m very impressed with how Julia Margaret Cameron approached the “essence” of photographic truth, and found a psychological dimension in her portraits. I appreciate the work of Baron de Meyer for the transparency of his light, especially in his nudes. I’m fascinated by the maximalist perspective that informed Bill Brandt’s creativity—using extreme wide-angle lenses for his nudes and portraits—and by his moral conscience in making politically engaged photographic documentation of English workers. And at the beginning of the 20th century the famous Polish writer and painter S.I. Witkiewicz created an amazing series of auto-portraits and portraits of his girlfriends, which, with evident will, discard the distance between photographer and model.


Sevilla, Spain

How did you develop the idea for the Photosynthesis process?
When I worked in fashion photography I soon realized that clients and modeling agencies selected only certain kinds of female models. In order to understand their selection principles, I began to make composite portraits of models with different physiques. That inspired me to apply this composite approach not only to portraits, but all kinds of subject matter, thereby creating visual “prototypes” for a photographic dictionary of a new visual language. Then I began to create materializations of ideas rather than objects or events.

Were single images not expressive enough for you?
Single images are boring. We can learn from those images nothing more than what we are able to see directly. They are dead. In contrast, Photosynthesis emits fabulous energy arising from the tensions that exist between different forms concentrated deep in the photographic surface of the image.

Is the layering done in camera or in the darkroom?
The miracle of image creation that Photosynthesis represents is performed inside the camera, where it is possible to easily composite countless space-time situations. I have built more than 200 special cameras with instant developing capabilities for this purpose, including an 8x10 Polaroid reflex camera. As a tribute to the ingenious inventor of Polaroid they are named Prusland cameras.

What does this layering represent to you?
It is something very special. I take photos of things that have never existed, do not exist, and will never exist. It is not the result of my imagination or someone else’s imagination. The final form of the image is not even the result of my initial intention. The form of these photographs is always “negotiated.”


15 Miradors, Madjanek, Poland

What exactly are you trying to communicate through these densely layered “negotiations?”
I want to share my experience with others. I create on photographic paper a virtual diagram resulting from the interplay of forces and energies existing between the forms and myself during the Photosynthesis experience.

The layering seems to be a way to undermine overused visual tropes so as to force viewers to look beyond the physical surface of your subject matter.
Absolutely. The process of penetrating into the surface of a photograph in order to see and understand something deeper is fundamental. My goal is for viewers to pass into the other side of the mirror like Alice in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland.” I want them to lose themselves and penetrate the subconscious, in the process becoming a little freer in their way of looking at and thinking about the world around them. But on the other hand, the image deconstruction that Photosynthesis creates is very open-ended. In every instant the viewer retains the possibility of coming back, of leaving the surface of the paper and detaching from the generic image.

Is the visual disorientation in the images meant to evoke the instability of modern life?
Yes, but it also concerns the difficulty of communicating the possibility of a complex situation existing in time, space and mind.


Ramses II, Luxor, Egypt

Many of these images draw on your architectural background to reference how ancient and modern structures have been used as an assertion of autocratic authority.
Yes. The image “15 Miradors,” of the Majdanek German concentration and extermination camp near Lublin, Poland, is a study about typology, the architecture of power, and the philosophy of domination. The image of the statue of Ramses II standing between stone columns is a similar expression of absolute rule.

Is it important that your work always have a strong social and/or political component?
I don’t care what is currently “important.” I work by intuition regarding problems that I am concerned about. I try to take pictures of existing things. If I express myself through art, it has to be strong. In fact, everything in life is social and political.

(Images kindly furnished by I Photo Central, on online photo gallery and collecting resource that represents Krzysztof Pruszkowki’s work. Contact: info@iphotocentral.com)