JESSICA DEAN CAMP

[don-dean]

Mikey Gower

Mikey Gower is a photographer who recently received his BFA from MassArt.

There seems to be a decided disconnect from photograph to photograph, more of a blur of images and timelines, can you talk about why that is?

I imagine this work to be a part of a larger, fictional archive. What is seen by the viewer is only a fragmented version of it. I wanted to build up the history of a narrator, as if we were catching only glimpses of their personal history, leaving the rest to be decided upon the viewer’s own history.

Time is a crucial factor when it comes to thinking about the pictures because I leave out crucial information that would allude to any specific time frame. It is a lot about looking back, but while simultaneously thinking about the future.

Do you think making artwork helps people deal with their mortality?  What about your own?

Everyone has a different relationship with making art, and for me to say that I can speak for a larger population about something almost impossible to understand would be wrong. But yes, I do think that is part of it. A lust for immortality has been a reoccurring theme within my work, and by obsessing over the desire to be invincible, I have actually come closer to accepting the impossibility of it. Which has been extremely liberating as an artist.

For me, the symbolism of the rose accepts this. Often times a rose is a promise of love, but by taking the rose out of its root you are actually bringing the thing closer to its death. This brought me to the repetition of the text ‘forever & always.’ When used in general dialogue it is almost always genuine, but nothing lasts forever.

How does attraction to people factor in to your photographic choices?

My decisions in people are always based on attraction, but that doesn’t always mean a physical or sexual attraction, but just a natural pull towards someone. Generally, the people I photograph are friends, or lovers, or people I have only met briefly, but regardless, I have formed some sort of relationship with them outside of the photograph. So their identities for me exist in two realms: a real one and a photographic one. Lust is huge part about being young, and embracing it without letting it control you is important. Photography has allowed me to understand my sexuality without out it being too aggressive visually.

Have you ever been in love?

Maybe not in the most obvious way of understanding this question, but I think I fall in love with something new every day.

What can photography do that makes you the most excited?

I’m becoming more and more jaded with the medium, and finding myself feeling more restricted because of it. Our world is so over populated with the consumption of images in the media that it has broken down the value of the photograph. People lack the ability or the will to read into an image. Photographs have the power to be extremely specific, but everyone always needs an explanation. I admire when an artist allows me, as a viewer, to draw my own conclusions. So, to answer the question, I am excited to see how photography will change.

Do you think we can get a sense of who you are by looking at your photographs?  Or are they unrelated to you personally?

I feel strangely disconnected with the imagined world that is created through my pictures, despite how closely connected it is to my own. I made the images on the principal that the maker of the pictures were some imagined fictional narrator that I made up. As if it were a fictional-memoir. That doesn’t mean you can’t get an idea about my own desires, morals, or interests, but it is easy to make assumptions. Those that know me personally see my pictures differently than those that don’t.

Ask yourself a question and respond.

Where can I find paradise?

im still looking

http://www.mikeygower.com/

[don-dean]

Vivian Ewing

Vivian Ewing is a photographer living and working in Portland, ME. She is currently pursuing her BFA at Maine College of Art.

Where does most of your inspiration come from?

Gossip from small towns. When there isn’t much to do in a little town, like the ones I grew up in on Martha’s Vineyard, people like to talk. The island is a place of hermits that scuttle away from the summer and creep back downtown to tell their saved-up gossip once the tourists go away. Whether the stories are true or not is of no matter; a true story tells you what actually happened and a lie tells you everything else. A single image in one of these tales can inspire a series of pictures. The stories that interest me the most are ones that speak of what it feels like to be miles out to sea.

An example of a story that has inspired me goes as follows; On the island, two teenage boys from my high school drove out to the longest, darkest stretch of road, one side of which is lined by deserted beach mansions, the other with ocean. They drove far apart until the other car’s headlights were barely visible then straight at each other at full speed, each of them daring or maybe praying the other would swerve. Neither of them did, of course, and both died in the resulting crash. I know this because someone sitting in their house could see the headlights and watched them converge.

Can you talk about what the relationship between photographs and text means to you?

I’m less interested in photographs than I am in the power and influence of good stories. It isn’t necessary for me to say that both writing and photography have unique abilities to tell stories, but I do believe that they can work together to make something bigger than the sum of their parts. W.G. Sebald is the master of combining photography and text and Sally Mann’s “Hold Still” is a good recent example.

How much thought goes into a photograph before you take the picture?

I heard about the house fire in Portland this past October that killed several young people from a friend (who’d heard it from another friend, etc.). He told me that one of the kids jumped out of the burning building to escape. When I heard this, I replayed in my mind what that must have looked like until I thought I’d go crazy. While I don’t know if this even happened, I imagined the moments where he looked for the window and what it felt like to find it and if he could see trees outside and what the smoke looked like billowing up into the sky.

Often I can’t help but do something about the images in my head. When my response is most productive, I figure out a way to make pictures about them.

Can you talk about the shine or glow in a few of you photographs?

The glow in many of my pictures is something I think I’ll grow out of; I see beautiful light and can’t resist. Some of my best pictures are ones that have a similarly luminous effect without a sparkly thing present. I read that you can catch a raccoon by putting something shiny at the bottom of a small hole with nails pointing down into the circle like a funnel. He’ll reach his hand in and make a fist around the lure and won’t be able to pull it back out. I’m like the raccoon, still in the woods, dazzled, very stubborn.

Does color represent emotion? Does it represent a mindset?

To me, color represents the lucidity of vision. Since I try to show what life looks like to me, and the experience of seeing it as a human, my pictures are in color.

What is your subject?

My subjects are what happens on islands and what happens when a person is an island unto themselves.

Ask yourself a question and respond.

How many degrees can a praying mantis turn its head?

180

www.vivianewing.com

[don-dean]

David Soffa

David Soffa is a photographer based in Philadelphia who recently received his MFA from Yale.

How do you feel about occasionally flirting with what could be labeled as sentimental and/or “pretty” photography?

 I don’t necessarily reject these labels outright because the operative word for me here is ‘flirting.’  Many of my pictures tread in aestheticized territory, but I like to think they transcend the sort of surface level beauty associated with sentimentality. That being said, emotion is an inescapable condition of life, so to say there’s no place for that in art photography is ­­misguided. 

When I was first exposed to the medium in 9th grade, my photo teacher was kind of guy who read magazines like Popular Photography and preached the rule of thirds gospel. The great thing about him was he allowed our class to just go out and take pictures of anything and everything. I credit him for getting me hooked. If he had told me to go home and make a ‘self-portrait narrative’ (as I was compelled to do later in high school) I don’t know if I would have fallen in love with photography so easily.  Although I quickly became bored while flipping through my copy of Pop Photo, I took his appreciation of sentimental pictures to heart.  I know I risk being labeled nerdy or untrendy, but a rainbow is one of the most gorgeous things ever any way you slice it.

How do you interact with the world when creating one of your more labored pictures?  What do you think about?  What about obsessiveness or repetition? 

 I wanted to make the wrapped tree picture partially because of my love/hate relationship with plastic and my respect for nature.  Construction sheeting is often used to conceal and protect objects that are destined to become angular and inorganic structures. There’s something so ominous about the way plastic can engulf and conceal, swallowing large patches of industrial landscape. I wanted to see what would happen if I applied this fairly common practice to something natural. I wanted to comment on the state of the environment today: urban sprawl, the detrimental effects of petroleum use, and the virtual suffocation of nature. I knew a picture like that had to be at once ominous and seductive. I spent three days wrapping that tree, using black plastic, a staple gun, and some well-honed climbing skills. Being so physically close to that tree, embracing it, becoming acquainted with every branch, I began to realize it was as much about swaddling as it was about suffocation. 

 In addition to my environmental concerns, this image means so much more to me. When I search for pictures in the world, I often photograph objects I’ve come to view as unintentional sculptures. The act of photographing is my way of pedestaling, or claiming authorship over my findings. I began to make the more labor intensive sculptural interventions like the tree picture because I can’t always stumble across what I’m looking for in the external world.  I experience a quiet catharsis as I construct these pictures; they have proven to be effective psychic outlets for thoughts and feelings I experience when immersed in the landscape. The obsessiveness of these endeavors mirrors the way I approach composing all my photographs, always striving for formal rigor.  It is the same compulsion that drives me to explore my surroundings searching for visual meaning, day after day.

You seem just as interested in unnatural and geometric forms as you are in nature.  Can you talk about this?

 I’ve always been drawn to basic geometric forms. Geometry was the only math subject I ever enjoyed and I remember creating intricate block structures as a child.  Geometry is the foundation for all of civilization; it’s essential for the creation of any sort of structure or engineering feat. Despite this, perfect shapes almost never occur naturally. Perturbation from other natural forces always interfere. Trees would grow straight as a ruler if they weren’t subject to wind and rain. I think this lack of naturally occurring geometry is why humankind has always organized itself along engineered and mechanistic lines. In a way, this imposition of geometry into the landscape is our attempt at making sense of a planet that’s naturally fluid, adaptive and asymmetrical. In this vein, I strive to photograph with formal rigor, employing geometry and creating my own structured compositions using the frame, all in an attempt to understand and organize the world around me. I’m captivated by the countless objects and structures industry creates, some of them supremely bizarre.

What do you look for in a photograph?

Above all, I pictures to have affect and sincerity. If I’m moved, and I sense the photographer really cares, I’m down. My one exception to this are pictures that try to pass off nostalgia for content. Anything that looks old looks cool. It’s a cop-out.

What sort of burden do you take away from yourself or the viewer when you do not photograph people but instead photograph shapes and lines etc?

 I’ve always been weary of the ethical implications that come with photographing people I don’t know really well.  There’s an inherent power exchange, and although there are many who derive pleasure from being photographed, I can’t help but see the transaction as lopsided.

When I was 15 and wandering through the city, a homeless man asked me for money.  He had a lazy eye and wore a bright orange camouflage print vest.  I agreed to pay him on the condition I could take his picture. Why? National Geographic.  He seemed to acquiesce, and after taking my dollar, he stood motionless in front of that brick wall.  I squatted and hurriedly made several full length portraits and a close up. Standing in front of him, my camera in his face, I felt very uncomfortable. When I saw the resulting pictures, I was disgusted with myself.  It wasn’t my place to photograph this man. It felt like exploitation and it was. As cliched as it sounds, I couldn’t help but think I had stolen a piece of this man’s dignity. Ever since then, I’ve been hyper-aware of that power exchange that takes place when I photograph a relative stranger.  

 So, in a sense the burden I relieve myself of is having to engage with the constant ethical debate in my head. I have long since given myself permission not to shoulder this weight. It’s a very different story when it comes to my viewers. I don’t think I’m unburdening them at all. People like looking at people.

Whether or not they look particularly attractive or unique is irrelevant.  As a social species, our desire see other humans is hardwired into our biology.  I’m challenging my viewers to make connections and glean meaning from my work without a familiar human element.

I do feel the need to qualify all of this by telling you that some of my favorite pictures ever are portraits. I have nothing but respect and admiration for many portraitists. From time to time, I do make portraits of people I’m close with and even people I’m not, but these mostly remain private.

What are you most concerned that your viewers should see in your work?

I’d like my viewers to see the poetry and allegorical possibilities that I’m attempting to show through everyday observations as well as ones that aren’t so commonplace.  I hope they would recognize my collections of pictures are more than the sum of their parts. And above all, I want them to perceive that I’m a person who is trying to photograph, the best that he can, what it feels like to be alive.

Someone very close to me once described my pictures as “a considerate collection of moments discovered with the same gentle innocence and eagerness a kid has when turning over a rock–what’s underneath is compelling, beautiful and bizarre.”  I like that.

Ask yourself a question and respond.

Q. Will artistic integrity survive late capitalism?

A. Will we?

www.davidsoffa.com

[don-dean]

Kyra Kennedy

Kyra Kennedy is a photographer who received her BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design this past spring.

Do you think everyone you photograph is beautiful? Is that important?

In the plain sense of the word, everyone I photograph is beautiful. What is most important for me is finding where the conventional beautiful falls apart. There is a tension of them not living up to their own expectations. I look for the ways in which I see their fantasy selves collapse, and those are the moments that I make pictures. The beauty that these women hold is deeper than their outer layers, and when they start to let their public faces melt I begin to see their stories. Most of the women I photograph have had painful pasts, but pain is beauty and beauty is pain. The women I photograph are complicated, and I think that is what makes them more than just beautiful on the surface.

Can you talk about the magic of the sparkles on your dress reflecting light in the palms of your hands? What does this and the rest of your pictures have to do with religion or God?

I grew up in an extremely Catholic household, and it often metaphorically comes out in my work even when I don’t intend for it. I have been thinking a lot recently about beauty as religion, and the way our society has shaped our ideals to reflect that. My mother was a prima ballerina in the Boston Ballet and so the influence of beauty was placed on me and my sister at a young age. I grew up equating beauty to my belief in God because in my household they became interconnected. The image of the sparkly hands is an image I feel like I make constantly. I see this image in many ways. For me, it fluctuates in meanings between the visual consequences of giving your life to the unwinnable battle of physical perfection, and the showing of the self sacrificial offering to beauty. The light from the dress in many ways can represent the consecrated host that we eat in church as a representative of God, or the tongues of fire that were placed in the disciples in order for them to have universal understanding. This light for me is the showing of this universal knowledge between women about expectations for physical perfection. The sparkles in many ways to me become a metaphor for the ways in which the pressure to be beautiful becomes this violent rash in our daily lives. 

Do you see yourself in the girls you photograph? Why do you photograph yourself?

Definitely. I have photographed women at many stages of life, and it makes me reflect on my childhood or fear for my future. Some of the women I have photographed have carried the burden of beauty for a long time, and it scares me to think that I might get stuck in the cycle as well. It is important to me that I include self portraiture within my projects because I am just as much a part of the obsession with perfection and physical beautification as any of my subjects. I like to think it keeps the work honest. These are people that I am critical of, but sympathetic to as well.I am pointing at my own flaws just as much as I am pointing out theirs. There is a dark humor in my work that I think comes from the ridiculousness of a women trying to achieve perfection since in its nature is unattainable. In the picture of me smiling with the snot and tears running down my face, I hoped that the viewer would be able to see the emotional turmoil that takes place when trying to achieve perfection. The inability to let go of a smile to the point where you have to cry.

Can you talk about your thoughts on femininity in relation to your work?  Bodily anxiety?

Right now I think I am focusing on such a small sect of femininity, but I think it is the femininity that we think of immediately when we hear the word. It’s “girly” femininity. Make up and dresses, and glittery sequins. I really want to challenge the idea of accepted femininity, and show how the pressure of it can actually produce intense self hatred. The more we see this type of femininity in the media the more intense the pressure is for women to fit into that mold. I really try to show the falseness of this mentality and show the harm that it can cause. We really just become masks of ourselves when we allow for this accepted model of femininity to become dominant. Its really kind of horrifying when you cannot just look in the mirror without posing or judging yourself. As for the bodily anxiety, I think that just comes in the blueprint with these types of ideals. Especially when you grow up with a ballerina mother, you are always very aware of the body, weight and of gesture. It just becomes natural to second guess every movement. In our culture it is normal to see a girl posing in the mirror, or trying on tons of outfits, changing every about themselves until they feel presentable to be in public. It is something I am trying to incorporate into my work more clearly. A huge part of the femininity that is marketed to girls today is the anxiety of never looking good enough.

Of all the things photography is capable of, which is the most important to you?

Photography for me started out as a way of dealing with problems I wasn’t ready to put into words. Instead of forming a full thought I was able to break down the problem, and make images that expressed different parts of what I believed. Now though, I feel like it is really important for me to be making work that I find honest, or as honest as photography can be. I know people don’t believe photography to be an honest medium, but I think it’s really important for me as a photographer to be as sympathetic and understanding to the idea I am working on. I hope the images reflect that as well. I’m not looking too make my images a grand, revolutionary thing, I just hope that in some way they make my viewer understand something they are not used to. Photography is a medium of telling, and I want to use that to my advantage.

Do you believe in the supernatural?  

YES!!! I am actually a huge believer in the supernatural. I grew up in a very old colonial town outside of Boston, and I am pretty sure half of my childhood was run by spirits. This probably also has a lot to do with growing up Catholic, but my mother instilled her belief in spirits to me and I truly believe that people who have passed on are still very present. There are a lot of things in the world that I don’t think we can explain, and I think thats really great. It’s really good for us humans to have things that we are unable to explain. Keeps us grounded. I think a lot of my work has elements of this weaved in since I really do feel like ghosts of others, and ghost of our past selves are always around. Also, aliens are real this is just obvious.

On another note I am a really big fan of cryptozoology, and I am seriously in the search for bigfoot. I would actually love to do a project about it…..

Ask yourself a question and respond.

Is Jewel a postmodern genius?

Yes.

www.kyrajkennedy.com

[don-dean]

Vincent Hung

Vincent Hung is a photographer who received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  He currently lives in Chicago.

Can you talk about the quality of your photographs (dark, grainy, washed out etc.) and what that does in the context of your images?

I didn’t want people to see my friends as who they are, rather who they could be. I wanted my photographs to have enough attitude to say something, not only by the content of the image, but also through lighting, color, texture, etc. What attracted me to producing dark photographs was how the loss of information highlighted the little bit of information that was there. For example, in some of my photos the subjects start to blend in with the background, leaving only their eyes and silhouettes visible. Sometimes the darkness is frightening and other times it is comforting; what I might find dope may be scary for others. I liked how this effect, whether it is darkness or color-overcasts, enforced or deterred the contents of each portrait.

What are you doing with the monochromatic images? Why are some terrifying?

Those were actually the first pictures I took for The Rose That Grew From Concrete. I shot them with a 4x5” and the film was expired. I loved how the colors took over the whole picture and how light illuminated parts of the photograph, leaving the rest in abstraction. I’m trying to find a way to utilize them in a series, but I also want to take more photos with the same effect before getting the ball rolling. I think the haze and the darkness is what gives the photographs an eerie feel.

Some of these images look like you shot into total darkness, using a flash to see- is your flash an extension of how you see and/or a tool for discovery?

I see it as a magnifying glass. It focus’ on the subject in front of it and makes the tiniest details seem larger than life.

Can you talk about style?  What kind of style do you have?

Thug Life? Lol

I’m not sure how to answer this question. I don’t think I aspire to be like anyone, nor do I want to be pigeonholed under a specific style. I’m inspired by a lot of artist and influenced by a lot of people, but I don’t like the idea of categorizing myself. 

Your pictures seem to reference or live within the realm of current American culture.  Are your pictures influenced by this culture?  A reaction to it?

Technology has helped shape my understanding of American Culture. Living in the era of technology, where I can see what is happening in my friend’s lives in California through Snapchat, I form relationships with people I may never meet or I stay connected with friends I don’t talk to anymore. Looking at popular topics on social media platforms, I’m able to learn how people define themselves by looking at how they chose to represent themselves, what photos they like, what they say to the world, etc. For instance, the most liked photographs on Instagram are of drugs, sex, and money. I think the youth has accepted to settle for less, and have decided to live in the moment and live it up. I feel like we have been shouting out for help, but no one sees us. We learn to turn, getting beat up and bullied every day as a kid, to becoming a fighter and the strongest dude in high school. So in my work, I feel like I have to show how strong my friends and I have become.

Can you talk about the sexuality in your work?  Homoeroticism?

I’m trying to define what a man looks like by playing with the fine-line of masculinity, and when that starts to look gay. I don’t consider myself a homophobe. I grew up in an Asian American, Christian family, where gay culture was never accepted. I never experienced gay culture because it was never around me, then I went to SAIC and I was immersed into it. Though I tried to never show it, I was culture shocked. I wasn’t use to being around so many gay people at once. See, growing up I felt I was strong because the people around me were strong. Now, it was different because I became the minority and I felt like the people around me became a reflection of myself. My whole life I’ve been taught that a man takes care of his family, a man is strong for those around him, and a man is no bitch. I took me a while to realize that I was trying to fit this image of what I thought a Man looked like. I realized that, what I look like or how I talk meant nothing to my manhood, but rather how I define myself is what makes me a man.

Ask yourself a question and respond.

Whats next for you?

Within the next two weeks I’m making album-sized books of The Rose That Grew From Concrete, and I’m giving them away for free on the streets of Chicago. I’m going to try to cover all of Chicago, so keep an eye for me handing out books and talking to people! If you see me, say hi and see what’s good!

http://www.vincenthung.com/

[don-dean]

Luke Libera Moore

Luke Libera Moore received his BFA from Cooper Union in 2012 and currently lives and work in New York.

How does lighting affect how we look at these objects? Would the object change in different lighting?

Absolutely, they would be entirely different.  I think that lighting is usually the first formal quality to establish the psychological conditions of an image and the presumed state of the subjects within it.  Light serves to define the affective space within the picture, and in doing this it suggests to the viewer a general method of approaching the work - though you can’t force anyone to heed this suggestion.  Lighting, like every other aspect of a photo, also brings forward associations at the level of culture and custom, not just internal mental states (can those be entirely separated?)  Cinema and advertising are probably the two fundamental media to create and circulate these codes of light - or interpretative frameworks.  I draw from these codes in a fair amount of my work –combining various light-signs from genres like horror, sci-fi, and melodrama with the sleek and color-coordinated visual language of desire in adverts for home improvement and luxury goods.  I try to prevent pastiche from becoming the most pressing note in my work, however, these canonical references help to form the light quality that I often work with, which is integral to the work as a whole.  I try to utilize seductive yet ominous light qualities that will (ideally) leave viewers feeling both entranced and disquieted – like a moth to flame.

Have you figured what these objects mean based on their design, or is this exploration just a consideration and not an answer?

I think my work hopes to stir thoughts, not necessarily to settle them.

My own understanding of these various mass-produced forms has changed significantly over the years, and they play different roles in different bodies of work.  At heart though, I find that I am drawn to certain human-made forms with a mixture of commodity fetishism and child-like fascination; forms that most often (but not always) fit the rubric of smooth, curvilinear, injection-molded, ergonomic, and computational or vector-based.

I think from a more macroscopic point of view, I am quite simply fascinated by historical artifacts, and I believe these formal qualities just described to be the ones that will typify our current material/aesthetic episteme.  Just as chromed, insect-like forms dominated automotive and industrial design (as well as the popular imagination) of the 1950s, as Barthes noted.

This interest in artifacts applies directly to my plaster constructions.  For this ongoing series I take surface casts from tons of different found and readymade objects.  Of course, these plaster forms create meaning differently than my photos of actual objects themselves.  The plaster shapes are essentially fossils, they’re abstractions: husks removed from their intended utility and established meaning.  This body of work is supposed to exist as imaginary documentation of our own anthropological ruin.  It hopes to propose and explore a post-human perspective, as if some anonymous being is uncovering and struggling to comprehend the significance of these incoherent remains.  And in this struggle, this imagined being (and hence the viewer) inflects these fragments with spiritual meaning – whereby residual banalities become divine relics.  

So far, the series is a meditation on form, objectivity, and cognitive interpretation itself.

I grew up watching the original “The Twilight Zone,” and to this day, I think it has inspired me more than any single source – which might explain a lot.

How do the aesthetics of this work relate to your personal emotions?

Sometimes people read the “sterile” quality of my work as being unfeeling.  I’ll never understand that conclusion.  But more importantly, I’m rather suspicious of this dividing line between “thoughts” and “emotions” – my thoughts are feelings and my feelings are thoughts.  So in that sense, I’m not quite sure what to say…

How timely is your artwork?

It’s hard to quantify something like that.  I think of art making as willfully participating in a historically contingent discourse, like scientific research or philosophy, so in that regard I think any work that hopes to engage with others has to be timely – especially photography, which I doubt can ever fully shed its documentary/diagnostic implications – no matter how far Photoshop goes - nor should it want to shed this history.

How do all of your photographic endeavors relate to each other?

I am kind of fickle and impatient, at least in my internal dealings.  So when I grow tired of where my work is heading at one moment, I tend to want to do the opposite.  Too much color?  Then no color.  Too contrived?  Then go “decisive moment” for a bit.  In this dialectical process I inevitably end up returning to what I had previously abandoned, and eventually, if all goes well, I can work through and synthesize my ideas and formal concerns.

When my head is spinning and I have to find some steady ground, and help myself to remember why I keep making things, I think back to ideas of “world building” – that basic human activity.  It’s the root of playing with dolls and of crafting political utopias.  Its rudimentary nature is part and parcel of its profundity.  World building could be considered the thread that binds my various projects.  

When I was about 10-years-old, I fell into a brief but deep depression when I suddenly realized the obvious truth that I would never be able physically inhabit the world of Final Fantasy 8.  As a succession of flat pictures, it was fundamentally inaccessible to me.  Coming back to that memory later in life, I think now that there was some undercurrent of morbid awareness rolled into that as well.  What I saw as the perfection of this video game universe seemed to taunt me for a while.

I want to build worlds that taunt and provoke reflection from behind the picture plane.

Tell us about a revelation you have had while making artwork.

I can’t really remember any revelation I’ve had about art while making art.  Most of my “eureka moments” regarding the significance and trajectory of my work, or just thoughts in general, tend to come while sitting at my computer or reading.  And more often then not – I forget them, or at very least, they get diluted by cynical revisions.  

Do you ever get that almost euphoric feeling where you think that you may have just tied up all the loose ends of the varying strands within your work, and then you write it down, and read it later – only to be completely confused and ask yourself “what the hell was I thinking?”

That seems to happen a lot.  

But this one time I was working in my studio and I was suddenly struck by an awareness of how awesome my mom is.  That’s about the best I’ve got at the moment.  

Ask yourself a question and respond.

Why’d you do it?

They made me.

http://lukeliberamoore.com

[don-dean]

Justin Clifford Rhody

Justin Clifford Rhody is a photographer in Oakland, CA and the curator and presenter of Vernacular Visions, public monthly slideshow series of found 35mm photo slides.

Do you have a personal connection to the American West?

Nowadays, I wake up here most mornings…. After a few years of traveling through with extended visits, I moved to the West Coast and I’ve never lived anywhere else that I’ve enjoyed more. The Bay Area is bursting with galleries and museums, but there’s also a thriving underground network of artists operating on their own terms in warehouses, living rooms and public spaces. The wide boulevards are full of life and there’s a general tone of anti-authoritarianism in the air, which I appreciate. Oakland is the place for me.

I moved to the West Coast with the intention of furthering the budding development of “The Western Lands” series which I had begun in 2012. Being more-or-less within a day’s drive of Southern California, Arizona, Nevada and parts of New Mexico has allowed me to make brief weekend excursions into the field at times when I’m unable to spend more extended lengths away from home. Last year, my friend Andrew invited my partner and me to build a small adobe cabin on his land in Northern New Mexico. Having that now as a regional pivot point is a major asset in being able to elaborate upon the series in a significant way - and in some ways it’s construction also became part of the overall process. This summer I plan to spend a little over a month out there; listening to jazz music in the desert, shooting film and beginning a new project of editing a book of anonymous UFO photographs from a large research archive with Abigail Smith.

Like most people who feel an attachment to the area, it was the staggering quality of light and the physical expansiveness of the land that initially impressed so. The mysterious dynamic of these elements often feel to be made up of one part prepossessing majesty and another part absolute mental terror. The land can be brutally unforgiving and indifferent to one’s needs, yet this seems to only inflame our desire to go further and deeper within the interior.

“Love and Desperation”: Here in fact, they are all California girls.

Are the people that live in the West particular to that place?

Everything everywhere is distinct and unique in its arrangement (eh, more or less), but there’s something strikingly particular about the American West in general. The elements of influence that determine the basic structure of the region and its participants (both human and non-) create a surreal amalgamation that transfers onto the photographic image, but it’s also our segmented collective interpretation of the West that make the images work. Both historically and metaphorically, this is the end of the road for many people in the United States. The title of the series pulls on this idea of a physical stopping point and also the Ancient Egyptian belief that in the afterlife, beyond the Land of the Dead, lies the heavenly Western Lands.

In the majority of my photographs people are physically present only to a marginal degree though. So I don’t think that what I’m doing in the region photographically, which might largely translate into degrees of alienation, puts me in a proper place to speak about the inhabitants of the area, the citizens. I’m more interested in creating work that merges my own psyche (or perhaps neurosis) into the work, rather than attempting to create a purely objective document or portrait.

Are they (the people) products of the environment you photograph?

They are the environment. What isn’t?

You take many pictures of objects photographed in a monolithic way (cell phone towers, trees, poles etc.)  Why is that?

I suppose I’ll leave the psychoanalysis, which would probably lead to a more revealing answer, for someone else to tackle (there’s gotta be one in there somewhere, right?)… In the task of imposing order upon the world to create a photograph of it, we’re left with the devices available. It may be as simple as that in most incidences; I’m dealing with form, color and four walls.

“No more than words can photographs mean what they say.” –Margaret Olin

Do you think there is a special kind of sunlight that only reaches the Southwestern states?

There’s absolutely something intrinsic about the light of the Southwest. Although there’s certainly a large quantity of it to be had, speaking in terms of abundance doesn’t quite address the opulent caliber of emotion that it’s able to evoke. This same inspiration has famously been a driving force for photographers since the 19th Century. In the last 100 years we can look to the work of Paul Strand, Joe Deal and Robert Adams (amongst others) to witness its consistent grip. It’s undeniable, and I don’t think that that’s going to change anytime soon.

What does the heat from the light do to your photographs?

The heat affects my brain and body more so than anything else and I suppose that influences how I choreograph the photos. After temperatures reach a certain level, life slows in pace and a studied focus becomes the norm. I find the dry heat of the highlands to be much more manageable than the humid summers I grew up with in the Midwest though.

Can you talk about how your pictures look very tightly framed or heavily cropped?

Working with film and rarely making more than 1 or 2 exposures of a scene has lent itself toward a practice of carefully composing the frame before tripping the shutter. Any extraneous material that isn’t being put to use will just deride the overall composition – everything matters. The majority of the time that I’m gazing through the view finder I’m simply looking and not exposing any film.

I don’t crop negatives though and I feel strongly about relying on in-camera operations for technical and aesthetical choices. Rather than simply being some sort of dogmatic principle, the whole of this approach ends up making sense both financially and also during the editing process. It can be incredibly painful to make selections from a set of 5 images that are all alike. Crushingly painful.

When photographing people/bodies in your work they seem to be cut off with floating heads, torsos, legs and even lower halves in underwear images, can you discuss photographing just limbs?

Without having our reading of the image interrupted by the eyes of the person we’re allowed to address and deal with subtler information. In many scenarios the “human hand” is so prevalent throughout the landscape that we really don’t need anything else to exclaim its presence anyway. In some situations it’s simply beside the point and detracts from the overall effect of the image by creating a hierarchy of meaning which denies the inter-connectedness of the setting.

Ask yourself a question and respond.

Q: What’s the point? A: It’s more about the rub.

http://www.justincliffordrhody.com

[don-dean]

Sophie Barbasch is a photographer based in New York City, she earned her MFA in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design.

When looking at your photographs there are some recurring objects throughout multiple series such as: boats, water sources, broken glass, and car...

[tammymercure]

wooooh

First, let me apologize for preaching to the choir. Everyone I know on Tumblr has been super cool and one of the reasons I love Tumblr is there is a lot of built-in equity.

Selektor Magazine just posted the first 100 photographers that they have featured. It really bummed me out to see only 8 or so women on there. Everyone can have their personal taste and I don’t mean any neg to Loic or the magazine, but there is still systematic sexism at work in the photo world. Men still get more gallery shows/features because they get more press for it and then they get more press because they get more gallery shows/features, etc etc. I’ve been slowly making wikipedia pages for notable woman photographers and it has been really eye-opening on what wikipedia considers credible resources and how few are available online for undeniably notable women. 

I’ve seen great strides in equity for women and people with diverse backgrounds in publications like VICE and most places on Tumblr. With power shifting out from the typical places there has been so much cool stuff happening- tons of amazing self published books, pop-up galleries, collectives, and more. I love Tumblr because people can use it to express themselves in whatever manner they choose and it is easy to find true friends and inspiration here.

I quickly made a list of awesome women photographers on tumblr if you are looking for some fine people to follow. (And sorry if I missed someone I love in my haste to make a list.) And feel free to message me with people you think I’d love!

Michelle K Anderson http://michelleka.tumblr.com/

Courtney Asztalos http://courtneyasztalos.tumblr.com/

Vivien Ayroles http://blog.vivienayroles.fr/

Sophie Barbasch http://sophiebarbasch.tumblr.com/

Kendrick Brinson http://kendrickbrinson.tumblr.com/

Hannah Burton http://hannahburtonphotography.tumblr.com/

Jessica Dean Camp http://jessicadeancamp.tumblr.com/

Marisha Camp http://marishacamp.tumblr.com/

Sam Cannon http://samcannon.tumblr.com/

Lindsay D’Addato http://lindsaydaddato.tumblr.com/

Rebecca Drolen http://rebeccadrolen.tumblr.com/

Jessica Eaton http://jessicaeaton.tumblr.com/

Jen Ervin http://jenervinblog.tumblr.com/

Lynley Faith http://lynleyfaith.tumblr.com/

Sarah Amy Fishlock http://sarahamyfishlock.tumblr.com/

Vivian Fu http://vivian-fu.tumblr.com/

Lydia Garnett http://lydiagarnett.tumblr.com/

Marisa Gertz http://marisagertz.tumblr.com/

Lisa Gidley http://lisagidley.tumblr.com/

Michelle Groskopf  http://dailystreet.tumblr.com/

Alexis Gross http://alexisgrossphotography.tumblr.com/

Marcie Hancock http://marciehancock.tumblr.com/

Becky Harlan http://beckyharlan.tumblr.com/

Molly Hayes http://mollyhayes.tumblr.com/

Cynthia Henebry http://marciehancock.tumblr.com/

Hobbes http://hhobbess.tumblr.com/

Jenny Hueston http://jennyhueston.tumblr.com/

Elizabeth Huey http://elizabeth-huey.tumblr.com/

Janna Ireland http://blog.jannaireland.com

Marta Iwanek http://martaiwanek.tumblr.com/

Julie Renee Jones http://juliereneejones.tumblr.com/

Megan King http://megangking.tumblr.com/

Cait Kovac http://caitkovac.tumblr.com/

Stacy Kranitz http://stacykranitz.tumblr.com/

Allyson Lamb http://allysonannelamb.tumblr.com/

Lodoe Laura http://lodoelaura.tumblr.com/

Kate Levy http://katelevyphotography.tumblr.com/

Morgan Rachel Levy http://morganrlevy.tumblr.com/

Amy Lombard http://amylombard.tumblr.com/

Yael Malka http://yaelmalka.tumblr.com/

Colleen Mann http://colleenmann.tumblr.com/

Maidje Marilyn http://www.maidjemarilyn.com/

Alex Matzke http://alexmatzke.tumblr.com/

Brittany Marcoux http://brittanymarcoux.tumblr.com/

Molly Matalon http://mollymatalon.tumblr.com/

Noelle McCleaf http://noellemccleaf.tumblr.com/

Ruth McMilan http://www.ruthmcm.com/

Lindsay Metivier http://lindsaymetivier.tumblr.com/

Elaine Catherine Miller http://ecmiller.tumblr.com/

Sarah Katherine Moore http://sarahkatherinemoore.tumblr.com/

Andrea Morales http://andreamoralesphoto.tumblr.com/

Eva O’Leary http://evaoleary.tumblr.com/

Cait Oppermann http://caitoppermann.tumblr.com/

Elle Perez http://elleperez.tumblr.com/

Helena Price http://blog.helenaprice.com/

Missy Prince http://seaofempties.tumblr.com/

Laurel Ptak http://laurelptak.com/

Lyndsey Putt http://lyndseyputt.tumblr.com/

Lola Quivororon http://lolalolaquivoron.tumblr.com/

Tamara Reynolds http://tamarareynoldsphotography.tumblr.com/

Clementine Schneidermann http://clementineschneider.tumblr.com/

Robin Schwartz http://robinschwartz.tumblr.com/

Maggie Shannon http://maggieshannon.tumblr.com/

Ginevra Shay http://ginevrashay.tumblr.com/

Erin Shipley http://etshipley.tumblr.com

Annie Sollinger http://bunnybunnyrabbit.tumblr.com/

Melissa Stallard http://melissastallard.tumblr.com/

Jamie Steele http://jamiesteele.tumblr.com/

Samantha Sutcliffe http://samanthasutcliffe.tumblr.com/

Shannon Taggart http://shannon-taggart.tumblr.com/

Yvonne Todd http://yvonnetodd.tumblr.com/

Lauren Wansker http://laurenwansker.tumblr.com/

LIndley Warren http://lindleywarren.tumblr.com/

Elizabeth Weinberg http://scrapbook.elizabethweinberg.com/

Sara J Winston http://jwwwinston.tumblr.com/

Tara Wray http://tarawray.tumblr.com/

Jaclyn Wright http://jaclynrwright.tumblr.com/

Jessica Xie http://jessicaxiephoto.tumblr.com/

Suzanna Zak http://neithernor.tumblr.com/

And check out Accent Magazine http://blog.accent-magazine.com/  and Las Brujas de Plata http://lasbrujasdeplata.tumblr.com/.

[don-dean]

Alexis Vasilikos

Alexis Vasilikos is a photographer who currently co-edites Phases Magazine.

Is your voice in a photograph or an edit of images? Would your photographs change if someone else created the edit?

When attention is on an image my voice is there so to speak and when attention is on editing my voice is there too, they are parts of the same process. At a deeper level I wouldn’t place myself in an image or in a series of images, because the image is a very elusive thing, specially the self image. Coming to your second question: the photographs don’t have any inherent meaning or even existence in themselves, they exist in relation to an observer, so yes definitely they change according to who observes or edits them.

How do you know when a series is finished?

You just know it, it’s an intuitive knowing so I can’t tell you how exactly it happens, of course we need to keep in mind that something is finished for the time being, it doesn’t mean that it is not subject to change at another moment.

What does having a large amount of photographs in a series do to an individual photograph? Can you focus on one image or is your work designed to be taken in all at once?

Generally speaking a series of images creates an energetic field in which the single images are seen, a kind of context for an experience of seeing. In my view it’s not so important the quantity that a series contains as much as the quality and the feeling it creates, so what the series can do to the individual photograph depends on the quality of the editing , it is a question of subtlety.

Yes of course I focus on single images, in fact this is how images appear in the first place , they are manifestations of focused attention but when it comes to the question of presentation, a different kind of seeing is required, which is more panoramic, because you have to create passages from one image to the next and these passages create an inner rhythm and this inner rhythm creates a flow.

Like in music the different sounds create one musical composition and we can experience music both as individual sounds and as one piece depending on where we put the attention, we even have the possibility to hear the silence between the sounds, so even though the edits at my website have been made in this way it’s up to the viewer if he/she is going to perceive them as single images or as one flow of images.

What outside of your personal life informs your work the most?

The unknown.

Do you see or do you feel? Can they be done together?

Am I mutant, and not aware of it? (laughs) Yes we see and feel at the same time and also we are observing the seeing and the feeling as it happens.

Does it ever feel fruitless? Like there is no end and no reward?

It feels fruitless when we are looking for a reward in what we do and maybe we are meant to taste this in order to cease looking for fulfillment in activities or objects. As a dear friend beautifully puts it: no appointments no disappointments.

Ask yourself a question and respond.

Do you believe in miracles? I don’t have to believe, everywhere I look I see the miracle of existence.

www.alexisvasilikos.net

www.phasesmag.com

[don-dean]

Trey Wright

Trey Wright graduated from the University of North Texas and currently living and working in Dallas, Tx.

      There are many layers to your photographs: there are the objects or products, the photographs of these products used for sale, the studio collaging or arrangement, and then a final re-photographing. Where do you fit in? How do you feel rephotographing a photograph?

I’ve always held a fascination for photography but coming from a background in design I think my initial relationship to the medium has been that of reference material, a foundation to build from, and photography being a tool alongside other elements. I’ve worked so long not being the author of the photographs I’ve been working with that I think it no longer registers to me as something I shouldn’t be doing or moving away from—though I have take images where I am behind the camera. When I take a picture of another photograph, I feel like I am a witness to something. I would rather arrange things that are around me to photograph, but there is a lot of work that goes into that arranging—sorting through imagery, construction before the final photograph. I see myself being an arranger, I arrange photography to illustrate ideas I have about the world around me.

    What is your favorite color?  Why?

If I had to pick one it would be red because it relates to physical desire.

    Is there a line between advertisement photography and art photography?  Are there two such opposing forces or should there even be a  distinction?

There are a lot of similarities between the two. Both use compositional tricks to hold a viewers attention, both communicate some kind of message and they both will meet a similar kind of demise. The questions do become much richer when working on a personal project, questions that cannot always have a place within a commercial assignment. I’m less interested in answering questions in my fine art practice.

Is your work funny?  If so, what does that do for the artwork?

I think that the work is funny. Placing a nipple next to an arm, next a fly, next to a jewel creates a fun juxtaposition and irony in some cases. The cutting out of an image can also exaggerate a subject beyond what the original image was capable of and I think there is something funny in that. Humor helps me to get the viewer to linger on an image longer. I’m not always interested in creating a very dark statement about images shuffling around on the internet and losing their context. I would rather see the humor in that.

How does your commissioned work relate to your video work, your video  work to your studio work, your studio work to your portraits? Do they  enhance each other?

Most of my studio work has come about because of commissioned work. Sometimes I’ve really needed that push to get myself to start working on studio work again. I will use the commissioned work to test out different ideas. I started working on my series Totem because I was left with all these cut out accessories and that got me interested in setting up these shrines to them, figuring out how they would function as works of art. The portraits I’ve taken so far have been exercises in composition. I want to retain that sense of playfulness, simplicity and color in the portraits but I view most of them as affirmations that I have a command over my medium and that my true voice voice lies in constructed imagery. Though, I think what is interesting about most of the portraits I’m drawn to that I’ve taken is that there was something about them that I had no control over. That also makes them a respite from having so much control over the subject. I’ve been wanting to do a video for sometime and I was given the opportunity with a commissioned assignment to start testing that out, figuring out how I would exactly got about approaching the making of a video. I’m still figuring ways to utilize video in my fine art practice but it has opened up an entirely different type of output for my work. My video work so far has been influenced by my photographic work, the idea of layering and how that relates to the larger idea of how we experience images.

The Eye from trey wright on Vimeo.

Is your work social or political in nature?

The work features a lot of sourced images, so to evade the implications of that I think would be impossible. 

My work takes the images, warps them and represents them in these kind memorials to something that is passing. I’ve used for the most part one specific type imagery to illustrate this—advertising imagery. I like this subject matter because it flip flops between being something that is permanent and impermanent, beautiful and garish, personal and impersonal. I see a strong correlations between this type of subject and photography. 

Ask yourself a question and respond.

What is a piece of advise you have been given over the years?

I’m not sure exactly what the best advise has been but I do know the strangest. The strangest piece of advise was from a professor at the end of my first semester. The advise came stapled to the grading sheet of our final semester project, it was on a ratty piece of notebook paper and scrawled in black ink. The writing was nearly unreadable and had to re-read several times to make out what the words were—You can’t fake freedom.

It felt rather cryptic and I could never really figure out what he meant by it.

www.treywright.net  

[don-dean]

Louis Heilbronn

Louis Heilbronn received his BA from Bard College and currently lives and works in New York.

    Tell us about one of the most important moments of your life.

When I transferred colleges. Going to Bard ended up being a very important part of my life. Being surrounded by students with similar interests as well as having great professors was very different than my previous college experience. It really influenced where I am now.

    Do you place rules on your practice?

Generally no… But that being said I am very strict with myself. I will never force a picture if I do not feel it. I also still shoot with film so I only allow myself to make 1 to 2 frames each time I make a photograph.

    What is important about Paris, Texas?

Paris, Texas 2013 is a series I presented last year at Paris Photo. A majority of these photographs were literally taken between Paris and Texas. I was in Paris in early 2013 and from there I went to Texas for a month, stopping only briefly in New York. The work tracks my odd and mismatched journey. There is no beginning or end; a few pictures included in the series were even made several years before these trips.

The editing process was the most important aspect of Paris, Texas 2013. I developed a new method that was much looser and less restricted by time and place. Hence, why the project included such different geography and chronology.

    What governs how you feel about photography?

I work in a way that comes naturally to me. I do not force anything upon myself and rather allow my life experiences to influence my work. I hope that as my interests change and grow, my vision will evolve over time.

    Can you talk about the blonde woman in your work? Does she embody something?

Louise. Louise is an important part of my work as she is a source of inspiration as well as my best friend. When I photograph her I am always exploring new visual ideas. I have begun to see the photographs of her as a collaboration. She understands these ideas and intentions, which influences her presence in my work. She is one of several subjects that will continue to be woven in and out of my work over time.

    You’ve said you ‘work with out limits’, is there really such a space to exist in while taking photographs? Can you describe it?

What I was trying to say is that I never limit myself to a certain subject matter. When I am out photographing anything goes. Anytime I see something that I am interested I will make the picture, regardless of whether it fits with what I am currently working on. It may appear in a body of work 5 years later, who knows. The editing always happens after and it is only then that things begin to fall into place.

    Ask yourself a question and respond?

Where are you now?

Northern Wisconsin

www.louisheilbronn.com

[jessicadeancamp]

Noah Kalina

[jessicadeancamp]

Noah Kalina

[don-dean]

Sadie Wechsler

Sadie Wechsler is a photographer who received her MFA from Yale in 2013.

Your work has changed dramatically in the last couple of years.  Can you discuss what brought this on and how the new and old work relate to each other?  

I felt my work needed to change, previously I felt I was practicing, mimicking things I had seen before, studying the past. I wanted to find a form of expression that was authentic to my personal experience and what I want to say. I wanted and still am searching to find a place where the form of the images speak to the content they carry.  This is why I went to graduate school, I felt suck and had no idea how or what this change would look like only that I need to move past everything I took for grated and find a new form of expression.  The themes and motivation to make the work have not changed, only the way it is expressed and the form it takes. I have always found it unavoidable to speak to our world as a malleable and finite material, and our bodies as small but influential actors in its manifestation.

Discuss one very specific emotion present in your work and how it relates to your own life.

I don’t know how to differentiate the work from my personal life. The photographs, while not obviously personal, are products of my desired experiences and their success or failure.  At my best the works acts as a refuge, a place where censorship is absent and where I bring a raw perspective.

Are your photographic experiences different from your life experiences at all? Do you live through your artwork? Is this harmful? Yes my work and personal life are inextricably connected, but the work does not reflect the entirety of my life, instead embodies expressions which cannot be realized in other ways.

Why do you think photography is best suited for your experience?  Can you talk about when you break out of traditional photographs, (for example, heavy digital manipulation or rephotographing collages)?

Photography is a way of representing the world.  It works with framing out more than inclusion, it has to do with a place where mechanics meet the hand and eyes gesture.  Photography is a grounding for my work it adds tangibility to ideas, and for this reason it is indispensable. Art making though must be tied to expression and all of the moves or interventions to “traditional photographs” are all to will a life or message into a work that otherwise would be undirected and thus is necessary to the work.

What is your work searching for? Do time and space exist with in the search? Do the photographs relate or are you the common link? I am searching for a concise form of communication where time and space are redefined. All of the photographs relate because they are all in search for the same form of expression.

Tell us about one thing that you feel more strongly about than anything else in the world.  Photography is a medium of depths of forms and types of articulations which must be probed to create work that helps people expand the way they see.

Ask yourself a question and respond.

What meal do you wan the most right now?

Wow, that is hard question because I am quite hungry. I think I would have to go with super cheesy pizza pies with lots of vegetables and sausage with a beer or two.

http://www.sadiewechsler.com

[don-dean]

Dan Boardman

Dan Boardman is a visual artist living in Somerville Massachusetts, he received his MFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2012.

Why are the protagonist in your photographs mostly men? Great Question. I know why for some bodies of work. For example in The Citizen I was specifically building a population of people. It started with a photograph I took of a young boy with a home cut mohawk. It’s a strange thing but with that photograph I felt I knew something about that kid. What I knew about him didn’t come from speaking with him, but came later when looking at the image. Of course I was projecting my own experiences into him. He became a vessel for people and places I hadn’t thought about in years. That experience wasn’t happening in my other photographs, and it made me interested in making portraits for awhile. 

Why Men specifically? When I was photographing the images that became The Citizen I was completely saturating myself with science fiction. On some level it was affecting my choices when making images. I was thinking about a group of people that would be left on earth, or would be too stubborn to leave it. Not at the time but later on in editing I was thinking of Dick Proenneke and his survivalist impulses, and the photographer Esko Männikkö who is interested in a certain self imposed male isolation. I did and do photograph women, but in this body of work (which has spilled over into two other projects) I was trying to create a population that could be in it’s last generation.

What is at the very center of the world in your photographs? Where do you go from there?

I think even back to the first images I made I was rooted in a type of fiction, and I’m certainly interested in the narrative potential in photographs. More importantly though I feel propelled forward by the human experience. A nebulous topic for sure. I think about how we perceive the human experience as one that extends not only from our own birth to death, but must have existed before us, and all signs say it will still be going after us. This idea manifests itself in different ways in my work. The Citizen is a sort of prophecy. The Family of Man looks at a single point perspective of the universe. Witness and 72 Second Window deal with the present moment and photographic-time.

Tell us about what you think beauty is, and why it matters.

I think beauty comes from openness, and knowledge. It’s very easy to dismiss. Thankfully I think we are coming out of a generation of irony and negativity disguised as skepticism. I’m reminded of this essay from Richard Feynman’s autobiography; Feynman describes looking at a flower with a friend and his friend can appreciate all the aesthetic qualities of the flower, where as Dr. Feynman because of his knowledge of physics and natural sciences can imagine what is happening that the eye can not see. Perhaps then he can squeeze even more beauty and wonder from the flower. I think this is really about knowledge and beyond simply knowing some basic science. I think having more knowledge does make the world a more exciting and interesting place. On top of that though I think you need to allow it to be wonderful. 

What keeps you going? What are you trying to find out?

I’m still enjoying it. I think that’s what keeps me going. Actually I’m finding it easier and easier in some ways. More of the world is interesting to me now than it was ten years ago or so when I started making pictures.

Tell us about your childhood and what effect it has on you artwork. I was born in Southern California, but really grew up in Central New York. My father worked for a trade magazine that reviewed networking software and equipment on the large scale. He tested equipment and programs that companies might buy. As a result we had computers in the house for as long as I can remember. Typically though things were in pieces. Computers were put together when need be, and without noticed would be dismantled, reassembled or disappear. When moving from Southern California my parents decided to move into a fixer-upper. The house we all moved into (three sisters and I) was constantly being torn apart. In fact most of my young life was spent in rooms with no walls or make shift walls. Constantly rooms would morph into new spaces and entire sections of the house would be demolished. The fixing the house project extends out until today with some small pieces left to finish. All of this is taking place a way out in the country side. In this setting I lived with my sisters and parents and always a handful of friends. I love my family and the place I grew up.

Does it have an impact on my photographs? I think it has shaped my point of view on the world for sure.

You’ve said your photography tends to focus on questions, which comes first, the questions or the photographs?

Photographs. I’ve tried to work the other way around. It makes me realize that “questions” might not be what I’m after in the literal pursuit of images. I think questions (big ones) appear when I step back from my images and look at my work as a whole. Maybe a better way to put it would be that I embedded myself with some influence. For me that has been literature mostly. Although other photographers, music, movies etc get mixed in for sure. Sometimes those influences appear in images. Other times it’s not as serendipitous. I’ll set a rule that I see appearing in my images and try to abide by it (only men, no buildings, failing light). Just to see what happens when a mass of some type of image builds. Lastly and most importantly for me is the associations that come to life on the editing table, and not behind the camera. Those two things sometimes feel very separate, but work in tandem. Recently I’ve been deliberately trying to break from these techniques to see what happens.

Ask yourself a question and respond.

If you could not photograph what would you do creatively? / Please plug something shamelessly.

Thank you for asking. I think i’d try to learn how to be creative musically. I can play some instruments, and I’ve been in bands, but I would love to be more free musically. If anyone is the Boston area and wants to play some metal get in touch!!

Plugs: Glad you asked.

houseboatpress.com - the finest photobook publisher in the Somerville area. Lots of great stuff happening over here.

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http://www.houseboatpress.com/

[jessicadeancamp]

Jessica Dean Camp