10 February 2010
Solace in Solitude
Two events happened this past week giving me solace in solitude; the closing of an exhibition and a record snow storm.
I was proud to have a photograph, Dying Woman In Calabria, in The Digital to Daguerreotype Exhibit at the the Carnegie Museum of Art. The dying woman in Calabria was my aunt in 1984 and it was the first time we laid eyes on each other. She was too weak to talk but her stare personified both solace and solitude.
Also this week a huge snow storm hit the mid-atlantic causing a cozy night in front of the fire without electric, a uncanny quiet walk to the local market and countless hours looking out the window in solace and solitude.
Please take a moment to wander through past moments of SOLITUDE.
13 January 2010
Light as Substance
For most photographers light is the key element in the making of their art. Light dictates almost every aspect of the image-making process, from in-camera exposure to the final print’s tonal range. So for a photographer to say he’s embracing light as substance is not in itself unusual, but to do so with a seemingly unrelated skill-set, abandoned 30 years ago, was unexpected (at least to me).
In 2004 I started to imagine exhibition lighting not only as the illuminator, but as a contributor to the viewing experience; a cross between theatrical stage lighting and a James Turrell installation.
My first inclusion of substance lighting was the following year at the Mattress Factory Museum in Pittsburgh, in an installation called Passion and Politics.
The Passion and Politics lighting grid was used simply to extend the visible light range into the UV spectrum, allowing the viewer to read encrypted messages hidden on the photographs, broadsides and book pages’ surfaces.
Enthralled with the possibilities of controlling light, my studio was swiftly converted into an electronics/lighting laboratory and fabrication shop. A large format printer was put aside for a milling machine; photoshop actions were superseded by control system algorithms; google searches were pointing to LED lighting manufactures and electronic transducers. Incredibly, an electrical engineering career, abandoned long ago, smoothly dovetailed into my image-making process. A fervor for engineering, that never surfaced in my early life, was ignited.
The next chapter in the “lighting as substance” odyssey was the Face Value installation at the Butler Institute of Art in Youngstown, Ohio. Encrypted images were again brought into play, but this time the viewer became an interactive participant.
Looking into the small gallery, the viewer is confronted with a series of polyptych panels laying dormant with typical museum lighting. Crossing the gallery threshold triggers a ramping up of light on the Gandhi panel, a gentle wash of warm light fading to pale blue and finally the ultraviolet key opening the encrypted message, ending with a violent attack of strobing light. From that point on the viewer is encouraged to trigger the other panels; a brass doorbell for the Commonwealth, a MAO enameled panic button, and prayer rug and wailing wall for the Mideast interplay. They can be viewed here. The below video shows a slightly overweight viewer (he lost 8 pounds since then) illustrating the Mideast panels interaction.
What’s next? The CAPTIONS series has been photographed with substance lighting as an integral part of it’s storytelling. Hints can be found on the CAPTIONS slideshows.
07 January 2010
What Is Real?
The tag line on this site reads “Poignant views both real and imagined.” To the right of the tagline you find a biography link telling of a career torn between two passions; photojournalism and making photographs of real and fantasized personal observations.
Was the photojournalism real and the personal observations imagined? The truth is they were both real and they were both imagined.This amalgam might seem obvious in today’s media which seamlessly intertwines truth with fiction, but that has not always been the case. Seventeen years ago life was good as a travel photographer. I was part of a dream work flow; collaborations with culturally insightful editors and writers, traveling to exotic locations to record the pulse of it’s populace and returning to the excitement of crafting words and pictures into an informative and aesthetically pleasing feature story. But with these assignments came rules of engagement and editorial guidelines. The governing body, The American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME), kept a tight leash on editorial content. Although writers moved freely between literary genre, photographers were compartmentalized; photojournalist, commercial, industrial, advertising and fine art (the fine art classification came about when universities needed to legitimize and distinguish their photography degree from a trade school program). With little interdisciplinary connections I was pleased and shocked when approached by TWBA, the advertising agency of Absolut, to create a series of ads based on locations traveled to during editorial assignments. The ASME was not pleased with the clever interplay, reprimanding the publication and it’s editor for crossing the editorial integrity line, but to me it was the opening of a new visual language.
In the CAPTIONS series Marsico toils with the issues of his generation, some are real and some are imagined.
