REDUX 2016-2017
Photography labs are strange spaces where an odd array of items coalesce in hopes to maintain a complex medium with an endless array of permutations. Each one speaks to its own personal history alongside a larger history of process and material. The photographic medium has undergone extreme changes with the advent of digital technology rendering some tools useless and others treasured. This transformation provides me with a space for invention and creativity by working in-between the two photographic polarities.
In the lab I currently oversee, I have spent a good deal of time digging through cabinets, finding other people’s notes and books, their stockpiled supplies, and the traces of their art-making processes. It feels like a necessary invasion of privacy; to make sense out of someone else’s way of working and to create a functional space for those just passing through. This process is a familiar one as many of the labs I’ve occupied prior to this served as secondary homes to the artists working within them. It is an aspect of my work as an educator and artist that I have come to truly appreciate as I have moved from place to place. I can always find a recognizable thread in the pile of photographic odds and ends. The images here reconcile several histories into one.