Hasta La Ideas

Our interview with the self-taught tintype photographer on the process, struggle and journey behind making the largest wet plate print ever

The 2012 Palm Springs Photo Festival Portfolio Review is the nation’s largest photography review program for both commercial and fine art photographers, and it offers the rare opportunity for photographers to get their work in front of some of the world’s most important curators, publishers, agents and art dealers. It also offers the opportunity for photographers to connect with one another and discuss their work. I was excited to participate in this year’s Festival, and when I arrived on the very first day, I was stopped in my tracks by one of the most spectacular photographs I had seen in a long time. What I was looking at was the largest tintype I had ever seen—in fact, the largest tintype anyone had ever seen—taken by Ian Ruhter.

On the third day of the Festival, Ian posted a video onto his Facebook page called “Silver and Light” documenting the challenging process of making these pictures, which included building what’s essentially a custom camera that fills the entire bed of a small truck. The revelatory video immediately began to speed across the Internet, even making it onto the web pages of celebrities like Justin Timberlake. I spent a lot of the week talking to Ian about his work, and witnessing this humble guy’s reaction to the mounting interest in his journey as a photographer.

Why did you start working with wet-plate photography in the first place?

As my photography started to become more and more digitized, I began to miss the feeling of being in the darkroom. And then one day, I went to buy film, and I discovered that they weren’t even making the type of film I used to use. I felt I was beginning to lose touch with what it really meant to make a photograph. So I decided to take a step into a time-machine and make pictures the way they were made in the 1800s. I started doing my own research, and basically just ordered everything off the internet and started making plates in my loft in LA. Then I took a class with Will Dunniway, and that helped push me further.

What drove you to try and make the largest tintype that had ever been made?

Once I had started to make some nice smaller plates, I began showing them to people. I started scanning them and sharing them as digital files. It was then that I realized I had lost the integrity of the photo again—I had just ended up returning to digital. I realized that if I was going to make pictures in a way I wanted, that I would have to take the process in an entirely different direction.

How much time went by between having the idea and creating your first successful large-scale image?

About a year and a half.

Why didn’t you give up?

Even though everyone was telling me that it was impossible, I believed I could do it. Besides once I had bought the lens and the truck I needed to make the pictures, I was so heavily invested, that I felt I just couldn’t back out.

The type of lens you needed is incredibly rare, how did you find it?

I checked around and people were telling me that the lens I was looking for was close to impossible to find. They were coming up for auction every few years or something. I started looking on Ebay and within the first month of searching, I had found and bought the lens. I took it as a sign that this was something I was just meant to do.

Can you describe what was actually involved in figuring out how to do what had never been done?

One of the most frustrating things about doing something that no one has ever done, is that there was no one to call and ask for help. This really became a process of trial and error. I mean, I barely even graduated high school, and here I was forced to be a scientist. I had to create design and build models and do experiments. I had to build a camera big enough to stand in. I had to figure out how to get these chemicals onto such a huge plate of metal. And to make it even more difficult, I decided that I was going to go out on location and shoot landscapes, so I couldn’t even control the environment. I had to start everything from scratch.

Now that you’ve accomplished your primary goal, where do you want this to go?

I started with landscapes, and I want to continue to tell the story of the American landscape, but I also want to tell the story of the people who are shaped by the land. Like Richard Avedon‘s pictures taken in the West. I want to drive my truck out into America. Now that I have the camera and figured out the process, it’s time to create.

Perhaps even more than the pictures you’ve taken, people around the world are reacting to the journey you showed us in your video. It must be amazing to be seen as this inspiration for people who want to follow their dreams?

It’s completely overwhelming to have so many people understand and be inspired by my story. Even if it’s not the actual photo that is inspiring people, even if they’re becoming emotional about the process—connecting with people is still the most exciting part of being an artist.

Challenging machismo through hypnotically vibrant thread installations

Growing up as a boy in Mexico, Gabriel Dawe was forbidden to explore the artistic elements of textiles and embroidery, an area thought to be reserved for women. Nevertheless, the color and intensity of Mexican culture began to appear in his artwork after moving to Montreal in 2000. Now based out of Texas, the mixed media artist has made a career out of the mind-bending thread installations that compose the “Plexus” series.

Citing artist Anish Kapoor as a major influence, Dawe creates complex, colorful and often vertigo-inducing spatial structures, which are meant to evoke the invisible forces that shape our existence—such as social norms and expectations—and to draw our attention to the invisible order amidst the chaos of life. On a much more superficial level, the installations are visually beautiful, and seem to make the intangible visible.

As he prepares for the solo show “The Density of Light” at Lot 10 in Brussels, we spoke to the artist about process, masculinity and the peculiarities of light.

What is it like to approach a new installation space?

My work consists of devising the arrangement of the structure I’m going to make with the thread. These installations are site-specific, which means that every new installation has to be created for that particular space. They also have to be done in the space itself, which means that I cannot create them in advance and then transport it.

The process begins with some sort of dialog with the space where the installation is going to be. Every room has particularities that offer possibilities and restrictions to what I can do. Once I decide where to put the wood structures that hold the hooks that serve as anchor points, I start to devise how and in what sequence I am going to link those anchor points, as well as what color progression I will use. It’s usually a lot of planning, so that when I get to the space I can execute my plan as seamlessly as possible.

Can you tell us a bit about the process and the thread that you use?

The thread is regular sewing thread, 100% polyester, and it comes in a wide variety of colors, so I don’t do any of the dyeing myself. Usually each color is a unique long piece of thread, held in place by mere tension. Sometimes I use more than one spool of a certain color, but I just tie together the ends and continue with the installation. The color mixing really occurs in the space, a byproduct of the process. Plexus no. 9 has 5,000 meters of each color, a total of 60 kilometers, which comes to about 37 miles.

How do these new pieces for the “Density of Light” exhibit differ from your previous work?

Because this work is not a studio practice and it relies on having to work in different spaces, every new installation offers the opportunity to try something new, or a different variation of something I’ve already tried. In this way, they are constantly evolving and changing. The particularities of Lot 10, (where 13 and 14 will be) allow me to revisit certain structures I’ve worked on in the past, but with a new variation that will give them a distinct look.

For Plexus no. 13, I’m doing three intersecting structures, similar to No. 6, but with three big differences: the proportions are much different; the placement of the wooden structures, which are at a different angles; and the color sequence. Plexus no. 14 will be a take on one of my very first ideas, which until now I hadn’t had a chance to try.

What about the name, “The Density of Light”?

Very early on in the series, the idea of light became an intrinsic part of these installations. Because I use regular sewing thread on an architectural scale, the structures created are ethereal and diaphanous. I think of them as existing in a space between the material and the immaterial; or like some sort of alchemical experiment where I attempt to materialize light.

How do you see your work as challenging gender roles?

My challenge against machismo was much more obvious when I started to work with embroidery which was expressly forbidden to me as a boy. It is also very present in some of my work within the “Pain” series, where I deconstruct pieces of clothing and I cover them with pins. As my work has evolved, I’ve continued with that thought in mind, but in a more broader sense, exploring social constructs of gender and how we constantly deal with them on a day to day basis.

Gabriel Dawe’s next installation “The Density of Light” will be shown at Lot 10 Galerie in Brussels from April 12 to June 9.

Images courtesy of the artist, Kevin Todora (Plexus no. 4, no. 3), Mike Metcalfe (Plexus no. 5), and Carlos Aleman (Plexus no.12).

Lot 10 Galerie

15 rue Lanfray

1050 Brussels, BE

Collaborative art revives a century-old former nursing home estate

Originally conceived as a white-glove retirement home for elderly who had lost their fortunes during the Great Depression, the once decadent Andrew Freedman Home in the Bronx itself fell from grace in the 30 years since it closed its doors. The grand manor had succumbed to natural decay until local arts initiative No Longer Empty reclaimed the property, inviting 32 artists to participate in This Side of Paradise, a site-specific public art exhibition that has transformed the space and brought the building back to the community.

Spanning an entire Bronx city block, the estate’s cavernous hallways lead to a grand ballroom, mahogany-lined library and countless boarding rooms, all of which have been bequeathed to the artists as a three-dimensional canvas to do with what they please. Paintings, installations, film, sculpture and photography fill the home, encouraging guests to wander the halls and take in all the home and art have to offer.

While some artists chose to work within the site’s own physical makeup, others like Justen Ladda channel its former inhabitants. His “Like Money Like Water” installation creates a scene where Ladda’s skeletons quite literally piss their money away—a legacy that haunted many former Freedman Home residents to the end—addressing the illusion of money’s worth and the real value of life.

Two of the more unconventional works came from graffiti artists HOW and NOSM and muralist Sofia Maldonando. The honeycomb textures and giant prisms of HOW and NOSM’s “Reflections” create an otherworldly experience that really switches gears as you roam through the show. Maldonando chose the kitchen as the home’s heart, where her street-influenced art is paired with a personally prepared dish made with ingredients sourced from local food vendors to “make something for the community and make something that will last,” she says.

This Side of Paradise will run through 5 June 2012. Numerous community-focused events will also run concurrently in the space,
including La Cocina—a cooking workshop on 21 April, held in the the estate’s kitchen, which now features a mural by artist Sofia Maldonando. For more images of This Side of Paradise see the gallery below.

The famed performance artist’s most significant works are revisited to further blur the line between audience and participant

Marina Abramović has returned to Milan with a new performance, specially conceived for the Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea (PAC), her first major museum exhibition since her retrospective in 2010 at the MoMA. The Abramović Method continues Abramović’s three major performances from the last decade: The House With the Ocean View (2002), Seven Easy Pieces (2005) and The Artist is Present (2010). The focal point is always the constant relationship with the public, which becomes part of the artwork.

A retrospective of her most significant performances is presented among furniture with embedded minerals, allowing the public to interact with them while standing, sitting or lying down on the sculptures. These objects create a physical and mental pathway that transforms the PAC into an experience of darkness and light, absence and presence, altered perceptions.

Visitors can become performers and stand in absolute silence (thanks to special noise canceling headphones) expand their senses, observe (the rooms are provided with telescopes), and learn to listen. The Abramović Method aims to transform the artist, the performers and the public. In the video below we get a brief look at the piece in action.

The Abramović Method

Curated by Diego Sileo and Eugenio Viola

March 21—June 10, 2012

PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea

Via Palestro, 14

Milan

Gary Panter and Joshua White tune you in and trip you out with an array of mind-bending works

Meeting Joshua White and Gary Panter is like stepping back in time. Not because White is responsible for creating the Joshua Light Show—the beautifully psychedelic backdrop that entertained thousands at Fillmore East concerts for Janis Joplin, Jimmy Hendrix, The Who and more in the 1960s—but because they continue designing experiences with the same childlike nature they likely possessed as creative young kids decades ago. This skillful, ingenuous approach is evident in their retrospective-like exhibition currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, where Panter’s playfully simple illustrations and hypnotic graphics glow under White’s tightly orchestrated theater lights.

While kindred in spirit, the two are actually from slightly different eras. Panter neatly sums it up when he says, “Free love didn’t happen to me.” White began synthesizing music and lights in the late ’60s, making a name for himself among the rock ‘n’ roll crowd in New York shortly after graduating from USC. Panter, who grew up in Texas, read about the Joshua Light Show in magazines at his local drug store. A trained painter and genuine magpie, after graduating college Panter moved to New York and began hosting small shows at record shops in Williamsburg, where he would wiggle a flashlight behind a shiny piece of film while making weird noises with abandoned beat boxes. White saw one of these shows, thought he could help Panter streamline his production, and their friendship and working relationship began.

We recently visited Panter’s studio, an airy space on the top floor of his Brooklyn home, filled with random shiny objects, stacks of records, acrylic paintings, sculptural mobiles and around 200 sketchbooks. The duo calls much of this miscellany “light show potential”—things that can be thrown in the mix to modify the already trippy liquid light show. At its foundation, the spectacle’s lava lamp quality is as simple as colored water and colored oil continuously moving around on top of an overhead projector.

As the MoCAD show demonstrates, their approach has expanded in concept and size over the years, but really only in a sense of refinement. The DIY vibe still lingers, evident in the shoebox mockup, sketches and sculptural models Panter created for the exhibition. The fun house effect Panter lends the show is likely a nod to his days working on the sets of Pee Wee’s Playhouse, which now provides the perfect environment for White’s immersive light show installation at the museum. Whether in a slightly more static setting like the Detroit exhibition or in their performative light shows that reflect the music playing at the moment, White and Panter’s work always stems from their art first.

Their candid analog style isn’t without any digital elements—they often distort computer-generated imagery in their light show performances—but you definitely won’t catch them doing a laser light show. “I have two problems with lasers,” White explains. “One is that it is a very strange repurposing of something that is so magnificently pure. And the other thing is the colors—well it’s not a rich palette. Kind of cold.” Instead they employ a “less is more” approach to their work, which keeps the shows from becoming what White calls “too soupy or too speedy” while allowing the audience’s minds to wander. “We have people coming up to us going ‘were there camels carrying giant bears?’ or something, and we always say ‘You saw that? Good for you!'” They toy with synesthesia, giving freedom to the people watching to interpret the visuals how they like.

Together they continue to put on performative light shows, working with bands whose musical style closely matches their own experimental nature. Separately they both work on personal projects, and soon Panter will begin a residency at the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, which is funding the third installment and paradise version of his Divine Comedy graphic novels. Panter painstakingly dipped a chopstick in ink to draw the first two intricately detailed books, “Jimbo in Purgatory” and “Jimbo’s Inferno”.

The most obvious realization that comes across after spending any amount of time with White and Panter is that they are both highly intelligent and their work is a distillation of their hyperactive minds. Their ability to funnel ideas into various artistic forms speaks to their innate creative talents, and the results are entertaining as well as enlightening.

“Joshua White and Gary Panter’s Light Show” is currently on view at MoCAD through 29 April 2012. Panter shows his fine art work at Fredericks & Freiser gallery in NYC and performs with his band, Devin Gary & Ross at venues around Bushwick in Brooklyn.

Photos of Panter’s studio shot by Charis Kirchheimer. See more images in the slideshow.