After 20+ years of working with wet and dry collodion (all variants), plus calotypes, daguerreotypes, and all of the P.O.P. processes you can imagine and some you can’t, people have asked why I’m working in color now. It’s a good question, and it's more than fair to ask why the big change—I’m happy to answer it.
If you’ve followed my journey on this project (“In the Shadow of Sun Mountain: The Psychology of Othering and the Origins of Evil"), you’ll know I’ve spent a lot of time connecting the craft to the concept. Throughout that discovery process, I felt something was lacking but couldn’t put my finger on it. Over the winter, I had a lot of time to write and think about what I'd been doing. What I discovered was that I’d been missing the beauty here; it was lacking in the photographs. Please don’t misunderstand me. I have some gorgeous negatives and prints in wet and dry collodion as well as paper negatives and prints. However, as I lived with them and looked at them over and over, I couldn’t help but see that they didn’t fully represent this gorgeous place where I live.
“Color is all. When color is right, form is right. Color is everything, color is vibration like music; everything is vibration.”
How do you resolve that problem? For me, it was making work in color. I’ve written before about trying to paint the prints with watercolor, etc. It’s not the same. As I wrote my biography for my book, I wrote about the first photographic exhibition I had: polaroids. Gorgeous color, a little off with the color (like expired film), and very manipulated. Look up Lucas Samaras. This inspired me to go back to my “color days” in photography to resolve the “beauty” problem. I really enjoyed shooting Kodachrome and making Cibacrome (Ilfochrome) prints from the 35mm positives. I had experimented with direct color positives then too. So I revisited that, and here I am. This has been a boost for my creativity, and I’ve just started. You’ll see, over the spring and summer, what I do with this. It opens a lot of new and exciting possibilities for me. I absolutely love it!
I’m interested in the idea of memory. It’s one of the four words I’ve always used to make work: identity, difference, memory, and justice. These words are like legs on a table that support my work conceptually. I’ve tried to semiotically mirror these in the photographs I make.
“Drinking Vessel, Cactus, and Dried Barley” May 5, 2023, 10” x 10” (23,4 x 23, 4 cm) RA-4 Reversal direct color print.
“Drinking Vessel, Cactus, Quartz, and Dried Barley,” May 5, 2023, 10” x 10” (23,4 x 23,4 cm) RA-4 Reversal direct color print The “aurora borealis” artifacts in this print are very interesting to me; just like in wet or dry collodion or even paper negatives, the artifacts in these prints can be very appropriate for the concepts I’m working with.