Ross Bleckner and Philip Smith

What draws you to the source materials you use?

I’m attracted to images that can mean something other than what they represent at first glance. They should have an initial oddity that catches me off guard.  If I had to categorize the images, I would say I’m interested in pictures that hover somewhere between science, metaphysics, and complete absurdity. Also, they can’t be too recognizable or too contemporary. Maybe just familiar enough to lure you in but unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. I want the images to take the viewer somewhere other than where they are. 

Can you share a bit about your process?

My process is sheer stupidity and accident.

In the early 70s, I started taking pictures with a beat-up camera using black and white film.  This allowed me to sneak into bookstores, museums, libraries, or anywhere and capture images I liked without having to buy an expensive book.  I would go home and pretend I knew how to develop film, which I didn’t, so the negatives would emerge with all different densities—some too light and some too dark. 

One day Jamie Nares stopped by the studio to have a look and saw all these negatives strewn all over the place. He asked what they were and I explained they were reference material for my paintings.  Brilliantly, he suggested that I should print them. I never thought about it since they were just my library of images. 

Years later I remembered his comment and thought, “Hmmm, I live in the modern era with all kinds of technology, let me try and scan these and see what happens.” Now, these poor negatives had gobs of paint of them and were basically abused by me in the studio. Since they weren’t a nice flat piece of paper, the scanner had a bit of an issue dealing with all the unevenness of the negative and the gobs of paint so the scans were less than perfect.

As a test, I sent a bunch of these scans off to the drugstore to see what came back. Initially, I was horrified that they looked like someone had slipped the scanner some LSD, they were very trippy. The more I looked, I realized they were unlike anything I had seen before, especially in a photograph.

You welcome scratches, tears, and patina in your work. What appeals to you about these imperfections?

Yes, they have a wabi-sabi feel to them. The damage, the imperfections are part of their innate being and beauty. They result in something more painterly than photographic with layers of history. In many ways, they are like artifacts that have been unearthed. In part, due to their lack of photographic perfection, the images are more like manifestations in that they just appear from some unknown dimension. 

As I said to Ross when we discussed the show, you can tell by looking at his photographs that only a painter could have made them. His photographs invite chance, randomness, and lack of control. I believe those words apply to my photographs as well. 

What is the significance of scale to you and your work? (both the actual size of your works that pull from small, 35mm slides, and the elements you reference, such as molecules) 

The scale is important, it gives them a presence. When we print a small test, maybe 6x9 inches, they feel like small botanical drawings from another time. There is a preciousness to them, unlike the final printed photographs which are five feet tall. This gives them a somewhat totemic quality. They tower over the viewer.  I look at them as sentinels guarding the viewer like those mythical figures guarding the gates in ancient Babylon.

This show references Pictures, an exhibition you were a part of in 1977, curated by art historian Douglas Crimp. What would you say are the correlations between the work you shared in that earlier exhibition and this one?

Same but different. In my mind, there is no difference between the work back then and now even though it has continually evolved. It’s all of a piece.

I’m still interested in creating a pictographic language. Images are so powerful, they have been since pre-historic and pre-literate times. When I was in my twenties, I remember standing in Egyptian and Indian temples in utter awe of the mysterious images that surrounded and overwhelmed me. 

In martial arts, the term ren ma refers to polishing and refining your technique. It’s like you take a rock from the ground and polish and polish until you end up with a glittering gem. In some ways, I’m still polishing that rock from 1971 into a gem.

I wish Douglas was here, it would be interesting to hear his response.