About the Work
Direct to Plate photopolymer gravure: NOW IS ALWAYS, ROAMING and TENEMENT
My photopolymer gravure process involves photography, digital imaging, and printmaking. Basically, I start out as a photographer, then become a digital imaging specialist, and finish as a printmaker.
As a photographer, I am always on the lookout for moments that feel like they contain something larger than themselves. The picture I want to take is of a moment in time that is full of other times. That’s what my photographer’s eye is looking for. I usually use my cellphone for this, because I like small cameras. I’ve never been a big-camera, big-lens kind of photographer.
Later, when I review pictures on screen, I become a digital imaging specialist. I explore each image, looking for ways to let it become what it wants to be, remaining attentive to the feeling it evokes in me as it finds its voice in two-dimensional space. At this point I sometimes add film grain, or make it monochromatic so that the image has a timeless, dreamy quality.
I then transition into a printmaker. First, I use an Epson printer I’ve hacked in order to print the digital file onto an unexposed photopolymer plate. Then I expose the plate to UV light and fix the image and etch it in a water bath.
I put water-based ink (not oil based) on the plate and run it through a 1940s-era intaglio press. My final prints often use delicate, specialty papers, and I sometimes use two inks (which I mix myself) to achieve the tone that the image wants.
It’s a lengthy, hands-on process, and I love it. It’s challenging and rewarding, and it makes me feel connected to the earliest practitioners of photography.
Black and White Film: LIMBO and BRIDGING
In between Seattle and New York, I lived in Vermont and worked at Renaissance press for Paul Taylor and also with John Goodman Photogravure as a Master print maker. I printed photogravures, and assisted with cyanotypes, platinum-palladium prints, gum prints, kalotypes, and wet-plate collodium prints for artists such as Tom Baril, Walker Evans, Louis Gonzalez-Palma, John Dugdale, and Kiki Smith. During this time, I made trips to Manhattan to shoot 1600-speed film at night with a tiny Minox I dubbed “the spy camera.” I then printed the high-speed black & white film as 20×24 color c-prints; the results were reminiscent of the historic processes I’d come to know so well.
Cell Phone Photography: OUT OF RANGE
I’m definitely not the kind of photographer you see with a big expensive camera and a really long lens. I like small cameras. My camera of choice for many years was my little LG flip phone. It was like having a pinhole camera with a digital back.
But after a while, my wonderful LG wasn’t all that great to use as an actual phone. So I now shoot with my iPhone.
With my cellphone images, I apply digital enhancements and use archival paper to create prints reminiscent of 19th-century film processes. Using today’s technology to create yesterday’s images is, I think, relevant to how we think about photography: where it has been, what it is now, and where it is going.
Super 8: RECEPTION and STILL WALKING
The images in Limbo and Bridging often remind me of film stills pulled from a mysterious, noirish movie. Their particular cinematic quality led me to shoot in Super-8. After developing the film, I projected it onto different surfaces. Then I digitally recorded the projections and added sound (in Reception, it’s an AM radio). I like this sandwich of media, how it weds high and low tech, past with present, the familiar with the strange.
Hidden in Still Walking is a photo of my mother, taken by my father. Although you can’t really see her, she actually appears several times in the loop of the woman walking.
Direct to Plate photopolymer gravure: NOW IS ALWAYS, ROAMING and TENEMENT
My photopolymer gravure process involves photography, digital imaging, and printmaking. Basically, I start out as a photographer, then become a digital imaging specialist, and finish as a printmaker.
As a photographer, I am always on the lookout for moments that feel like they contain something larger than themselves. The picture I want to take is of a moment in time that is full of other times. That’s what my photographer’s eye is looking for. I usually use my cellphone for this, because I like small cameras. I’ve never been a big-camera, big-lens kind of photographer.
Later, when I review pictures on screen, I become a digital imaging specialist. I explore each image, looking for ways to let it become what it wants to be, remaining attentive to the feeling it evokes in me as it finds its voice in two-dimensional space. At this point I sometimes add film grain, or make it monochromatic so that the image has a timeless, dreamy quality.
I then transition into a printmaker. First, I use an Epson printer I’ve hacked in order to print the digital file onto an unexposed photopolymer plate. Then I expose the plate to UV light and fix the image and etch it in a water bath.
I put water-based ink (not oil based) on the plate and run it through a 1940s-era intaglio press. My final prints often use delicate, specialty papers, and I sometimes use two inks (which I mix myself) to achieve the tone that the image wants.
It’s a lengthy, hands-on process, and I love it. It’s challenging and rewarding, and it makes me feel connected to the earliest practitioners of photography.
Black and White Film: LIMBO and BRIDGING
In between Seattle and New York, I lived in Vermont and worked at Renaissance press for Paul Taylor and also with John Goodman Photogravure as a Master print maker. I printed photogravures, and assisted with cyanotypes, platinum-palladium prints, gum prints, kalotypes, and wet-plate collodium prints for artists such as Tom Baril, Walker Evans, Louis Gonzalez-Palma, John Dugdale, and Kiki Smith. During this time, I made trips to Manhattan to shoot 1600-speed film at night with a tiny Minox I dubbed “the spy camera.” I then printed the high-speed black & white film as 20×24 color c-prints; the results were reminiscent of the historic processes I’d come to know so well.
Cell Phone Photography: OUT OF RANGE
I’m definitely not the kind of photographer you see with a big expensive camera and a really long lens. I like small cameras. My camera of choice for many years was my little LG flip phone. It was like having a pinhole camera with a digital back.
But after a while, my wonderful LG wasn’t all that great to use as an actual phone. So I now shoot with my iPhone.
With my cellphone images, I apply digital enhancements and use archival paper to create prints reminiscent of 19th-century film processes. Using today’s technology to create yesterday’s images is, I think, relevant to how we think about photography: where it has been, what it is now, and where it is going.
Super 8: RECEPTION and STILL WALKING
The images in Limbo and Bridging often remind me of film stills pulled from a mysterious, noirish movie. Their particular cinematic quality led me to shoot in Super-8. After developing the film, I projected it onto different surfaces. Then I digitally recorded the projections and added sound (in Reception, it’s an AM radio). I like this sandwich of media, how it weds high and low tech, past with present, the familiar with the strange.
Hidden in Still Walking is a photo of my mother, taken by my father. Although you can’t really see her, she actually appears several times in the loop of the woman walking.