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Burnt Negative Series
Artist's Statement from 2008
My background and perspective as a painter while taking pictures, has led me to investigate the abstraction of photography. In certain painting styles, there exists a sense of action conveyed through a dance of brushstrokes, paint splatter, and drips that co-mingle together to create an atmosphere and feeling, while seemingly devoid of content.
This series of printed negatives, intentionally damaged by fire, aims to capitalize on this painting technique by stripping away the representational aspect that is ordinarily ingrained within the medium of photography. Hopefully, these photos, presented on a larger scale, draw the viewer in to look at, and to examine the loss of information, and thus be affected by the emptiness of their open atmosphere. I contend that we are often overloaded with visual data, and even manipulated by the inserted messages rather than the reality captured by many photographic images. This is especially true in a time where photographic truth is so easily altered. This series offers an escape from this, allowing the viewer to ascertain personal meaning or relevance.
My approach, when I am creating, is usually a process of examining things that would normally be overlooked or discarded. The uselessness of something that has been destroyed is put on a pedestal, allowing flaw and damage to elevate a perceived ugliness and to expose a true, intrinsic, and sublime nature. For me, this process is tied to a fascination with theoretical physics and ideas of hidden dimensions or realities. I have a strong desire to find that which is veiled or hidden and to decode the symbolic or mysterious in everything around us. I am expecting that the viewer will be more examining of reality and walk away with a better ability to see beauty, especially with that which has not been deemed worthy of being labeled such, yet is, or can be, inherently beautiful.
-David
All that said, I've had yet a few more thoughts when reviewing this series currently, after thirteen years, and you can read more rambling about the personal meaning/significance it has for me here.
Burnt Negative #1 - A Glimpse Beyond the Veil, (2008) C-print (20 x 20 inches)
About the Formations Series
The gallery of photos above purposefully precedes this "About" section, since I describe what is going on in this series here - everyone needs a little mystery. It's been fun to hear people’s guesses at what is being employed, especially as far as materials are concerned. Equally as amusing are guesses as to what the photos are of before the viewers know. This process of imagining images and forms ties-in to the widely shared human act of looking at cloud formations and finding animals and objects moving their evolving shapes which we often refer to as cloud-gazing.
While taking numerous photos for this series, I was unaware of exactly where I was heading with them; rather, I was simply pulling and manipulating a found object of fiberglass insulation (glass wool) into various interesting shapes. It was only afterwards that I began to piece together an abstract story of a bird in flight getting hung up, broken apart, and reassembling. It was this conjuring that linked-in with the idea of cloud-gazing. Formation 3, for me, especially elicits the idea of a bird in-flight.
*One of the photos from this series appears on the album cover and disc for Asleep's The Mass of Empty Spaces EP, (2009). More album artwork can be viewed under the Music tab.
Artist Statement from 2006
My artwork is a vehicle through which I communicate what is inside my mind, and show an organization of how I see things. When I look at the world, and when I am creating, I am looking for the things that are generally overlooked. Picking up dirt from the ground to assemble a painting, or photographing abandoned desolate scenes, is merely a means utilized to point at where beauty can be found in all the supposed ugly. By lifting so-called crap up and putting it on a pedestal, I hope to show its true sublime nature. I am not creating the beauty; I am just pulling it out of the world, and concentrating it for the viewer. Beauty is, after all, subjective, and therefore, anywhere and everywhere.
For me, this process is tied to a fascination with theoretical physics and ideas of hidden dimensions or realities. I have a strong desire to find that which is veiled or hidden, and to decode the symbolic or mysterious in existence around me.
Staring at cloud formations to witness animals and objects manifest or reveal themselves is a simple way to see the hidden organization of chaos. It’s also a good example of how we, as humans, tend to insert ourselves into everything. We make connections that don’t actually exist as well as constantly and unconsciously tend to anthropomorphize objects.
There was an obvious similarity between clouds and the fluffy insulation that became apparent as I photographed this series. The fiberglass lent itself to this process of discovery as a substance both soft and airy, yet also an abrasive respiratory and skin irritant - it's hazards veiled by appearances. Moreover, the glass wool came alive and spoke as the sunlight beamed through it, and as the wind blew. The acquired photos then became a story to assemble and order to show a reality that is always present, but lies unnoticed. These dirty fleshy scraps literally lie discarded and left to rot in an illegal dump in an old barren abandoned factory complex. The emasculate and inviting hues coupled with the softness of the material along with the complimentary color palette of the blue sky background serves to draw you in. It is interesting that images of something putrid, dirty, and carcass-like, that are floating mid-air, could yield this result. Here, photographed, they proved that beauty can always be retrieved. Having seen my work, I expect that the viewer will walk away with an improved ability to extract beauty from life; no matter how desperate or horrible it may look, not get hung up and stuck, and float beyond rumination.
-David
Formation 3, (2006) Digital c-print on photo paper (8 x 8 inches)
Artifact Series
This series evolved from my early black and white photography meanderings, and developed from a photo assignment I was given in college. While I would look for interesting places to shoot around town, mostly abandoned warehouses and scenes of urban decay, I became curious about what were essentially illegal dump sites and the contents thereof. An eye for beauty in the ugly found me collecting and cataloging various detritus as though it were artifacts of a crime scene. To "photograph" these found trash objects, I placed them in a desktop image scanner. The scanner became the camera for all but one image in the series. It WAS cleaned and debris-free for other students' use when I finished - but it was quite fun hauling in paper bags full of crap and watching the perplexed looks from several of the more traditional photography students. I just rolled with the idea of elevating the mundane and getting my hands and equipment a little dirty.
Being forced to make images in this manner made me contemplate the elevation of garbage into something worth looking at. My favorite finds were that of old Polaroids that were so badly damaged that they had become abstract images of intrigue. At this point, in getting these particular images onto this site, they are a digital shot on a screen, of a digital print on photo paper from a digital camera, from a Polaroid shot of who knows what. I like the convoluted nature of this series - as if something important is being documented. It is funny how we can trick ourselves into seeing more than what is presented. I find the objects interesting, if for nothing else other than their obliteration and mystery. Silhouettes emerge and call to mind substance or value, but in the end it's a pile of pretty junk.
Artifact 1, (2006) Digital c-print on photo paper (10 x 8 inches)
Artifact Series
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Autism and Aspherger's Photo Essay
Art Concerning a Compelling Life Issue
Statement from 2008:
Ed is a friend of the family who recently became homeless after his stepfather died last year. Ed lived with my parents for a while during this past winter. We are certain Ed has some mental and social/communication issues, but he is a harmless person. He is very quiet, and we all came to suspect he is a person living as a high-functioning autistic adult who had never been formally diagnosed. From what we can gather from his few stories, he was also abused by his mother from a young age. He has never worked nor would he really be able to. I am not even sure that he completely understands the situation he is in - he sort of has friends and people he knows and he will just show up for a 'visit' and wanders around town this way. He is not hard to find and many of us often drive around downtown Youngstown between the YSU campus, hospital, and the rescue mission to spot Ed walking and give him food or money.
My parents can no longer let him stay at their home, but he does stop occasionally for food and a shower. We have tried everything to find him programs or anything to get him help for his situation. Everything is a dead end. He is quite intelligent when you get him talking and/or if he talks about chess strategy or baseball stats, but he is utterly unable to truly care for himself and survive in our system.
When I started thinking of what I could do for a project that shows a compelling life issue, I thought of Ed and his situation, and how he has fallen through the cracks. Autism is big news today and everyone (including myself) immediately thinks of young children when the subject comes up. I began to wonder about these children and what eventually becomes of them as they grow up. It is a sad statistic that many fall out of the system and no longer receive any government help after turning eighteen, and even worse, a very high percentage of autistic children end up on the streets.
These are very powerful images to me because I have a two year old son and the thought of him being homeless is unimaginable and devastating. My son shows no signs of being autistic and displays the personality of a very bright, communicative, and interactive toddler. I thank god or whatever it is that is greater than myself for this every day. Anyway, this project is a photo-story series. First, the subject is presented, then my son with Little People toy figures lined up, is portrayed as the autistic child. Next, I skip to Ed, and finally the Little People toys again, that represent those individuals that have "fallen through the cracks."
-David
Through the Cracks - Billboard, (2008) c-print (24 x 24 inches)
Youngstown State University Fire Hydrants
Pete the Penguin
I did a small series of photographs for a group show with a central theme of artwork relating to Youngstown State University. YSU's mascot is known as Pete the Penguin. As such, many of the campus fire hydrants had been painted uniquely over the years as different penguins. Although I never painted any of the hydrants, I have always enjoyed them while walking on campus. At the time of the show with the deadline approaching, I found myself interested by "though the viewfinder" photography I saw on sites like flickr.com, so I decided to employ this technique in photographing the penguins. The method is simply to use a digital camera to look through another older camera's viewfinder, capturing a photo with a "built-in" border. I don't recall what old camera I used to look through (I bought several to test on eBay), but I think it was something similar to the old Eastman Kodak Brownie Holiday camera. I like the grainy smudge effects and the occasional rainbow solar flare that happens when shooting this way.
Eastman Kodak Brownie Holiday camera. (c. 1950's)