When it comes to defining photography, every viewer comes with a different history and understanding. The experiences and certain expectations we have toward the medium can vary. By accessing the formalities of old photographic processes and applying it allows a connection to its history. The richness of collodion, silver, and color dyes are darkroom methods predominately used in the past and contained various limitations. Integrating photographic materials from different eras in combination with technological advancements that were not available or considered is what inspires me to write new narratives.
Photography at every stage is very delicate; take for example, the lifespan of a color darkroom photograph, limited to 75-100 years (without constant UV exposure) before the print begins to change color, crack, and/or fade. I wish I could live 200 years to watch this slow event in my work take place. I anticipate this in the darkroom and when selecting prints that will best reflect this process. The paper folds, hand pouring of chemicals, and bending my work are also examples of an event, one that must only be imagined as a mark in time, perfectly suited for photography. These works are staged with consideration to their own particular limitations. My hope is that viewers can walk away with a little bit of openness to experiencing photography in a different way, such as taking note of the medium’s ability to create spatial
The works from In Absolute Space are photographic installations that began in 2019 with the collodion wet plate process. Through working with aluminum, the material used to create traditional tintypes, I am exploring the relationship between the soft curvatures of traditional darkroom photographic paper (previous works) and integrating the rigidity of this new material. The tintypes were created in a darkroom without a camera, where light and shadows take precedence over any recognizable imagery. Inspired by Andy Warhol’s 1978-79 Shadows, I explore the ‘one of a kind’ nature of the tintype and created a production line of numerous 20 x 24 inch wet plates that all contain comparable patterns of light and shadows. Unlike traditional tintype processes which utilize black polished aluminum, I try to reimagine the medium today, using abstraction as subject and highly reflective colorful aluminum substrates as a material. Like my previous works, the second stage of my working process is taking the plates outside of the darkroom and experimenting, physically giving shape to the material. To sculpt these plates, I work with industrial sheet metal machinery such as a slip roller, brake, shears and an English wheel. I purposefully bend and reflect the image against itself, breaking the often static and rectangular nature we’ve come to define as a photographic standard.
I embrace what many would consider flaws in the medium. Photography is incredibly delicate; conservationists work toward defying the consequences of time and UV light. Like the photographs from an old family photo album, I look forward to the shifting tonality of my color darkroom prints as time passes, and within my work I embody these color shifts tied to the RA-4 developing process. Wet plate collodion has been limited in scale not just because of the camera; it’s near impossible to evenly coat the plate with sensitizing and developing chemicals by hand on 20 x 24 inch plates.
Through these experimentation processes I create connections between all my darkroom works from the past decade. The results are new hybridized, sculptural pieces, that integrate the materials from the black and white, color and alternative processes darkrooms, pursuing the playfulness of how we define the medium.
Derived from a traditional color darkroom, I am exploring the boundaries and characteristics of photographic materials. Untitled Color & CMY RGB (2014-2018), traverse from a space where photography has been commonly restricted and transformed into new integrated forms. Utilizing the principles of the medium, the work at its core is about photographic paper. This amazing material is usually made invisible by photography; we see an image on the paper, but never the fiber, plastic, silver, dye and gelatin that make the paper itself.
The images are not from a camera; I work in the darkroom with photosensitive paper and light to develop a complex and imaginary language. I strive for subtractive color in its purest form, allowing the silver to take precedence, illuminating the glossy surface. The paper folds reveal substructures that commonly go unnoticed or hidden when a photograph is displayed. Through physically manipulating the paper, the intersection between image and object comes into play.
In both color and black and white, I physically manipulate the paper with a pigmented epoxy material to construct three-dimensional sculpted works that examine the intersection between image and object. The photo paper which was designed to lay flat is now permanently curling, and folding. The site-specific gallery lighting cast shadows from these objects, relating to the origin of how the works are created.
“April Friges’s pair of collaged arrangements of colored photographic paper have a dimensionality that gives them a sculptural quality. The way they curl up is like a declaration of independence from photographic flatness.”
-The Boston Globe, August 2022
In my previous body of work, Spectator (2012-2014), I address the medium of photography and its classification as a two-dimensional art form, which comprise of large-scale (50 inches x 8 to 50 feet), unique, black and white gelatin silver prints. I experiment with process in the darkroom and manipulate the paper to construct three-dimensional sculpted works. When the artwork is taken down from the gallery walls at the end of the exhibition, it is rolled up and re-flattened, thus creating a body of work in flux every time the work is exhibited. Subsequently, the sculptured image created will have a new form every time it is shown.
This work is intended to question the far too common two-dimensionality of photography and the constrained static rectangular frame that we have come to define as the medium. There is a gray area created between photography and sculpture that is left to the viewer to determine where the work belongs. The title Spectator is not just about looking at the work; perhaps the art objects themselves could be considered witness to the act of looking at photography as a genre in the contemporary art world. The pieces could therefore be the spectators that question how a photograph is now defined.
What’s the relationship between what we perceive and what we know? - Wolfgang Tillmans
