Presented at the 2017 International David Foster Wallace Conference at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois.

“The Black-and-White Series”

Having studied photography and art criticism, I arrived at David Foster Wallace because of my interest in postmodernism. This interest has devolved over the course of a few years, and I can now articulate my direction as illuminated by what I've learned about the postmodern style. What was an initial, somewhat sloppy, translation of abstract painting theory in to photographic terms is now an expression of the nuanced investigation of my ideas about the photographic form.

Wallace’s writings, particularly Infinite Jest, have been influenced in my work by providing a guide for how to portray the world around us in ways that, by today's standards, are in some way truthful. I've come to realize, because of Wallace, that the theories which interest me the most are those characterized by postmodernism, despite the fact that many of my earlier influences, at least on the surface, appeared to succeed the postmodern style. It was through Wallace, the criticism surrounding him, the videos of him on YouTube, that I realized I didn't need to subscribe to a particular style, but rather needed to choose which language which best suited what I was trying to say, and to use that language as a means to communicate those ideas.

This series of photographs is created using the traditional, thirty-five-millimeter, black-and-white, reversal process. I've chosen this form of photography in order to guide a discussion of how photographs represent reality in the digital age. The fact that they're created using an obsolete medium serves as an entry point for such a discussion, and is emphasized by nuanced clues in the imagery. One foundation for this series is the notion that digitization has fundamentally changed how we view images. Whereas traditional processes have a more overt physical relation to reality, digital processes seem much more removed, much more adulterated, which makes them seem less trustworthy. Because most people today assume the images they’re seeing have been doctored in some way due to digitization, and software like Photoshop, one result is that traditional process now offers a sense of realism possibly not seen since the medium’s inception. The fundamental shift is that, as compared to digital photography, traditional processes have taken on a meaning of realism.

My hope is to be a contributing member of what I see as a community of photographers revisiting the traditional process because it has taken on new life in the digital era. Having studied the abstract and cameraless processes of James Welling and Walead Beshty, I'd like to be mentioned alongside my contemporaries like Sara Geenberger-Rafferty, Letha Wilson, and Vanessa Albury, who are all working in a similar vein, and serve as inspirations for the Black-and-White series. For this series, the photographs’ images, how they’re printed, and their presentation all work toward being understood as unique, unadulterated objects. This idea is emphasized by photographing places that illustrate themes of postmodernism like banality, simulation, and a fragmented temporality, and by printing those images in ways that expose the physical elements of the traditional process. The result is a series of unique objects that allegorically counteract the infinite reproducibility of digital photographs.

This series is the result of several investigations and sketches which ranged in media from photograms and foggings, to Xeroxes, typewriting, and large-scale inkjet prints. One example of this was an investigation of how far I could push the boundaries of representation while maintaining the integrity of an image. For this piece I chose the image of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s “The Ecstasy of St. Teresa,” and printed it on labels which could be arranged disparately. This piece is an example of my interest in photography’s affinity for depiction, but also symbolically references David Foster Wallace’s use of the artwork in his book, Infinite Jest, which is that of a postmodern icon. My most recent investigation using the artwork as a postmodern icon is large-scale inkjet print that is duplicated and discolored. This piece exposes the complexities and failures of the digital process, specifically the lack of intuitive communication between computers and printers, which is signaled by the arbitrarily discolored image of grays and yellows that have no relation to how the artwork appears in real life. The idea of digital reproducibility, as is signified by the doubling of the image, is also apparent in this piece. What I learned from the experiments is that what I needed to do was to develop a cohesive series that conveys these ideas. So, I ordered some black-and-white thirty-five millimeter film, which I could develop and print myself, and I began shooting.

The first image I created in this series, the one which set the standard, is titled, “301 Boulevard” (2015). It's an eleven-by-fourteen-inch, black-and-white, silver-gelatin print depicting a larger-than-life metal fabricated sculpture of a woman set against an industrial park. The sculpture is an awkward advertisement for whatever kind of business is inside, and I thought it was the perfect real-life situation to photograph.

While printing, I knew I wanted to emphasize the image, so I decided to minimize any formal intervention exposing the material. I wanted the cameraless and abstract qualities to be remain nuanced, and for the piece to, at least first, appear just like any old photograph. I accomplished this by printing this image without an easel, which means the print is off-center, and crooked in relation to the edges of the paper. To me, the crookedness signals the complexity of the traditional process, in that missing just one single element, in this case the easel, affects the ultimate image. A printer attached to a computer would've straightened the image automatically, so I was particularly interested in printing this way. The result had the kind of subtlety and nuance I was looking for, so I printed an image of a sailboat on land titled, “Sailboat” (2015), and an image of a sign on the side of the road titled, “Jesus Loves You Repent to Jesus” (2015) in the same way.

What I realized in viewing these photographs was that I didn't need to create a strict visual format for every image, but, rather, I could make small groupings of ideas that, when compiled with other groupings, would create a series. I also realized that, by grouping photographs in this way, I could convey an idea about time that I'd been interested in for a while, which is that of the photographic sequence. Part pf my plan became to create tiny sequences that expressed a kind of non-linearity in that they don't develop any direct narrative when compiled other than he implied meta-narrative of me driving around, shooting, and printing these photos.

The next photographs created in this series are titled “Becky” (2016) and “Car Gate” (2016). Here, Becky is pictured addressing the camera, portraiture-style, set against stacks of wooden palettes, which is printed in muddy grays. The image I chose to accompany her in this sequence is one taken at a lot where the fence’s gate is, on any given day, a car wide enough to block passage. The day I shot this image, the gate was made of an old white car. Together, this diptych represents the boundary of nuance for the Black-and White series. As images printed without any overt clues to the formal capacity of the traditional process, these two photographs show how improvised chemicals, meaning no graduated cylinders or thermometers were used in mixing them, can result in muddy, gray, dusty images that can deteriorate, stain, and do things beyond my control. These images also represent the depictive quality of photography, especially the one of Becky, in that they somehow piggy-back on the genre of portraiture.

Also, it was this sequence that made me realize that what I was photographing were banal events, which led me to consider how I could incorporate what I've learned about postmodernism and Wallace in to my photography in a real way. From then on, I had a plan. I was going to photograph banal events, and print them in ways that would expose the traditional form of photography.

That led me to the next photographs created in this series, which are a portrait of my neighbor titled, “Carol with Fogging” (2017), and an image of the unattended pool in my apartment complex titled, “Pool Closed with Fogging” (2017). These images were made with the prior images in mind, with an emphasis on extreme banality and boredom, but I also needed to print them in a way that was different from the previous two sequences. In order to do this, I chose to print these images in my studio, which was not light-safe, daylight spilled in from the cracks in the roof and walls during Florida mid-days, and what resulted was fogged photographs with a base tone of gray. What signals the complexities and pitfalls of the traditional process here is that there are no true whites in the tone of these photographs, and what I was really pleased with is that the fogging also hinting at a language of cameraless photography.

The most recent sequence was created as one meant to be much more characteristically postmodern. They are banal scenes, one is of a mural of an American flag, and the other two depict rocks that are unmistakably fake. The rocks remind me of Wallace’s writings because they make no effort to hide their fraudulence, which is both hilarious and ridiculous. They remind of the parts of Infinite Jest when it's really not clear whether Wallace wants to portray the world as funny or utterly sad. To me, they're the perfect signifiers for a culture reproduced to the point of simulation, and, by photographing them, I'm also providing a means for the discussion of photography’s role, rather it's culpability, in creating such a situation.

In order to emphasize these ideas, I decided to incorporate cameraless elements in a more overt manner, and I did this by placing objects from the traditional photographic process on the paper while printing, which creates a photogram. “Dead End with Contrast Filters” (2017), depicts a mural of an American flag on a dead-end street over-layed with filters meant to control contrast in the traditional process. Like the lack of an easel in the previous pieces, these filters signal the complexity of the traditional process, but also serve as a record for the many pieces of equipment that, by today's standards, are completely obsolete. “Rock with Neutral Density Filter” (2017), and “Rock with Circular Polarizer” (2017), use a similar technique. These photographs show fake rocks in banal settings, encircled by white rings. The interior of the rings, where the rocks are located, are lighter than the rest of the image because the objects, in this case a neutral density filter and a circular polarizer, decrease the amount of light exposing the photographic paper. This last sequence, for me, is the perfect balance of traditional and cameraless processes.

What I see with this series is that what constitutes the postmodern style, in photographic terms, may need to be redefined. The concept is already confusing, which Wallace jokingly makes light of in his interview with Charlie Rose, but how photographic history sees postmodernism is through the work of artists like Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, and Laurie Simmons, who are all members of the Pictures Generation of the 1970s and 80s. A world reproduced to the point of simulation is an idea at the very core of how they’re understood, and this is despite the fact that the media they used were mere analog, traditional processes. The idea of reality was much different to a society who hadn't yet experienced digital media, and what this series has illuminated for me is that the concept of postmodernism may be even more important today than it was years ago.

 The Black-and-White series interprets postmodern ideas in to photographs. Inspired by my research in to David Foster Wallace, as well as my interest in current trends of analog and cameraless processes, this series signals themes of truth, banality, and non-linear time by means of deconstructing the traditional, thirty-five-millimeter reversal process. Hopefully, in doing this, I can create photographs that convey a sense of realism.