Interiors Series (B&W 4x5 film)
Much in the way a still-life painting can be about the act of painting, I see these exposures as being about the process of engaging with a space, objects, and surfaces with a camera. In this project, the 4x5 camera allows for a close proximity to subject matter and an elimination of context, and therefore the traditional perspective of the viewer can be broken, and other elements, such as light and texture, can be foregrounded. Additionally, this project acts as a love letter from myself to film. As this series was developing, my research centered around early conceptual artist that documented with the camera and experimental film movements. This work references the film texture of that period.
Submarine
The original conceptual parameters of this project stem from the 2014 Submarine series where I exposed several sheets of 4x5 color film in a WWII submarine, the USS Pampanito. Each exposure was made with the shutter left open as I carried the camera through the entire length of the vessel; therefore, exposing each sheet of film to all of the light that is contained within the submarine.
I recreated this process in two locations in Birmingham: the Linn-Henley Research Library and on a small clay trail on Red Mountain. For each, I followed the same format as the original Submarine project. I exposed the film in the main reading room of the archive, and on Red Mountain, I selected a specific area, designated a distance, and made each exposure as I walked through that space.
This project is fundamentally about the materiality and temporality of film. My objective with this process is to play with the medium and explore how, through subject elimination and a simple utilization of light, I can produce an image that references the photochemical properties and allows the resulting gesture and color field to dominate. Congruently, each piece draws attention to the absent subject, asking how these locations function as objects on a timeline, with each sheet of film acting as a fraction and record of their temporality.
Film Stills
The 1983 film essay Sans Soleil by Chris Marker is an anti-war film hidden in a poem. As the viewer, you are seduced by a sound and image combination so mesmerizing that you undergo a slight filmic vertigo, and any conception of narrative structure is elusive. I am utilizing this film and the work of Marker in my thesis research, and my approach in that examination has been to undergo a study of the film that extends beyond the traditional parameters of analytical research. I photographed the film, I read the text/narration as I watched the film, and I made a book from the narration of the film. These exposures are from that study of Sans Soleil.