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[ Music ]
>> The Visual Arts and Media Studies Division [background
music] is very, very happy to see
that such a great turnout tonight for our 26th,
that's right, 26th Artist in Residence kickoff here tonight.
Before we formally begin the talk I want to make a couple
of kind of obvious recommendations--
silence your iPhone, your smart phone, your dumb phone.
[Laughter]
>> All right, so we who speak in front of crowds
for a living are deeply troubled by the sound
of a phone going off even if we like that tune that it plays.
I'm going to give a very brief introduction to our Artist
in Residence Abe Morell tonight and following my intro,
Abe is going to speak and present his work,
he's a much better speaker than I am so you should be happy
that my remarks are going to be brief this evening.
Following my--
Abe's presentation he will take questions from the floor
and he's a very patient
and a very generous Q and A kind of guy.
And so I'm sure that that you'll have those questions
for him later this evening.
On the behalf of the students, the faculty and the staff
of the visual arts of media studies division,
I'm happy to welcome you to this kickoff event of our 26th Artist
in Residence, Abelardo Morell.
I do want to thank the board of trustees some
of whom may be present this evening as well
as our vice president of instruction Dr. Robert Bell
who is not but who is new to our campus
and much appreciated for his support.
And of course I'd like to thank our president Dr. Mark Rocha,
Dr. Rocha recently inquired whether I would be participating
in this year's Pasadena Marathon, clearly mistaking me
for a much younger man.
[Laughter]
>> Thanks for that Dr. Rocha and likewise thanks for your support
of the Visual Arts Division.
I would be remised not
to recognize my former immediate boss Alex Kritselis whose
leadership over the course of-- how many years Alex?
Where are you sitting?
Too many. [Laughter]
>> Over the course of too many years lead this division
to the prominence it holds not only on campus
but within a larger community of Southern California
and in the world of art education.
Alex, I've tried in a small way to model your leadership
to the extent that I have been successful in the least,
it is due to your example.
We can have applause for [inaudible].
[ Applause ]
>> I'd like to thank our faculty both full time and adjunct
for their dedication to the profession of teaching
and their work as artists.
If I might hear cite the members of this year's artist
and residence team, our gallery director, Ryan Tucker.
[ Applause ]
>> Professor Rick Osaka as well, there's Rick.
And most especially a photographer
and a genuine young runner, Professor Melanie Willhide.
[Applause]
>> Who Professor Willhide has spent way too much time
in my office or otherwise communicating with me via phone
and e-mail to the extent
that this residency can be considered anyone's baby,
the honor is yours Melanie, it's my deepest thanks to you.
There are many others worthy of thanks
but I finally must recognize 2 staff members the first being
Mr, Charles Jones, Charles, are you here?
>> Here.
>> Okay. [Laughter]
>> Where is over here?
Where are you?
>> At the door.
>> At the door, he's at the door.
[Laughter]
>> If the art gallery were somehow inserted into the movie,
The Great Escape, Charles is the scrounger,
the gallery go-to guy.
It is difficult to imagine the work
of assembling the installation going more quickly
or more smoothly without Charles's help.
Not the least, I want
to acknowledge the selfless dedication
of the division secretary Ms. Nhi Truong.
Nhi is the true unsung hero of VAMS.
I cannot say enough to express my sincere appreciation
for her contribution, and this is where it gets sappy.
What do artist do?
They learn.
They teach.
They expand and explore and in their work,
crystalize experience both theirs and ours.
They engage and embrace tradition
as much as they reject it.
In this course, redefining that tradition, they contradict
and affirm, they amuse and they frighten.
Artist propose to create and as such their work becomes a series
of existential acts bringing in the bards words
to array nothingness a local habitation and a name.
Above all, artists are serious, purposeful.
To make art is to participate in a culture of change,
the artists its change agents.
Arts capital is the work and its profit is a revelation
at the very center of the human condition,
Roland Barthes punctum, a piecing.
Bernini's puckish angel who packs a punch,
Yeats's terrible beauty, Morell's views
of the Brooklyn Bridge and of the Tuscan Hills
and I know these places, I know them to my deep hearts core.
Our 26th Artist in Residence Boston based photographer
Abelardo Morell is internationally renowned
as an innovator in fine art photography.
Born in Havana in 1948, Morell moved to the United States
in 1962, he earned a BA from Bowdoin College in 1977
and an MFA from Yale School of Art in 1981.
He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts Degree
from Bowdoin College in 1997.
Morell is best known
for dreamlike images created using a self designed
camera obscura.
In addition to these images,
the PCC exhibition includes recent work
in which Morell focuses his camera on the printed pages
of books, remarkable and both pictorial
and conceptual terms Morell's work touches upon many
disciplines including physics, history,
topography and architecture.
Morell has been the subject of one person exhibitions
at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Detroit Institute
of Arts the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and in internationally
in collections in Argentina, Brazil and dozens
of other museums and galleries worldwide.
His work is represented in scores
of public collections including the Metropolitan Museum
in New York, the Museum of Modern Art, the Getty,
the National Gallery of Canada and in London,
the Victoria and Albert Museum.
His photography is the subject of several books
in exhibition catalogs including camera obscura,
Abelardo Morell face to face photographs
at the Gardner Museum and a book of books.
Morell has received a multitude
of awards including the international center
for photography infinity award
and a John Simon Guggenheim memorial fellowship.
In addition to his exhibition of the PCC gallery,
Abelardo Morell will spend the week of March 19 through 23rd,
I'll tell you where in a second, on campus during
which time he will present a public lecture,
create a photograph of the PCC art collection
with the assistance of the Huntington library and wait
with PCC students and create a camera obscura.
All gathered, I'm pleased now to stop talking and honored
to present to you Abe Morell, thank you.
[Applause]
>> Thanks.
[ Applause ]
Am I on?
>> Yeah.
>> Can we dim-- this is way, way too bright.
Thank you Joe and Melanie-- has been amazing, she's--
I think she can run the whole city if she wanted to.
[Laughter]
>> So, I'm not saying anything new.
And a pleasure to be invited here and I honestly have
to say I'm really impressed with the place walking around
and seeing the kinds of students that live here.
As I was telling your president that it's both energetic
and hopeful, it's the world that I want to live in.
So, I'm extremely just pleased to be part of this place
and it's a beautiful area too, so thank you for inviting us.
And I hope that you have some questions afterwards.
You can probably go lower on the lights.
Someone said, "Love the art in you not you in the art."
So, that's-- I like that.
Am I still visible?
[Laughter]
>> A little lower.
[Laughter]
>> Thank you, that's better [laughs].
[Laughter]
I'm going to show a lot of work including work that I made 3,
4 days ago in Joshua Tree.
So, this is a real sort of retrospective look at things.
And just a little biographical background,
I was born as Joe mentioned in Havana, Cuba.
This is the town that I grew up in
and this is what I knew until I was 14.
And thinking about this place lately, I mean I grew up a block
from the beach, so-- and during a lot of turmoil,
revolution came and it was not easy to be
in the middle of all that.
But the idea of that sea being sort
of this infinity a block away, I think it helped me--
help shape something in me about ambition.
So, I show it because it's important to know
where someone came from and where-- how they developed.
So, this is me at 14, if you know anything
about the Latin-American literature or history
or politics, the revolution came
and it was very difficult for some people.
We were not rich, we're actually pretty poor,
but my father was going to be killed, so.
He's thought it be good to leave.
So, we came from, you know, Cuba to New York City in 1962
which is a freaky thing to do.
And I wouldn't actually recommend it.
But my sister, my mother, my father and I came
and I did not speak English.
It was one of those, "Oh, we're going to be
in a different place."
So, I'm going to show you some early pictures that I made then,
I bought a-- something called a Brownie,
this is much before your time but its sort of the equivalent
of a point and shoot, you know, back then.
And early pictures of our family life,
this is our first snow, Central Park.
Anyway I was 13 or 14.
My father and mother who worked really hard, my father took care
of 5 buildings in the city.
It was [inaudible], we lived in a basement,
apartment with no windows, hard work
yet we felt we had a promising new place.
We loved the idea of-- I know there are a lot of politicians
out there going freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom.
We actually felt it and the idea of being free
to do what we wanted was seemingly available.
This is our living room, I made this picture and my--
of course my mother wonders, "Why--
where is the person in that little picture?"
[Laughter]
>> And it wasn't until about 6, 7 years later
that I discover a woman named Deane Arbus.
And if you don't know her, Google her because she is one
of those important American artist that we've had.
Myself, my sister, my cousin this is thanksgiving
in this basement apartment.
So, in an interesting turn of events someone
from Bowdoin College in Maine came to my high school,
my English was still fairly poor but I was trying really hard.
Anyway, this person under the idea of affirmative action,
Bowdoin wants to get people who are not, you know,
those white dudes who are-- who come from prep schools.
So, they said, "You should apply" and I got in
and it was a big huge turn of events for me, I mean,
to leave New York City to be in a small wonderful college.
So-- so that's-- this guy here and I became this guy here.
[Laughter]
>> That was 1967 when I went there and that was--
those were crazy, crazy period American life.
But, I literally became an artist,
I took a photography course and I knew right away it's--
I was lucky to know right away
that I really wanted to do that forever.
So, I dint look back, I just knew I was--
I didn't know how I was going to make a living
but I knew I would make pictures.
So, the pictures that I made early
on were really quite nutty.
I wanted pictures of surrealism, of craziness and, you know,
if a shrink looked at then before [inaudible], well,
you are alienated of course, you know.
Life is kind of strange for you
so I did seek strangeness everywhere.
I'm going to forward way ahead now when my wife Lisa
and I had a child, and it's not new so everyone has children.
But, for me as an artist it was a real crossroad.
The work that I did in graduate school was a lot
of street work sort of like what you saw there.
But I sort of had this feeling that maybe I was sort of reborn
in an artistic way when Brady was born.
Why not try to make pictures?
They were more emotional, more of things nearby.
So I changed everything, cameras the sense of things,
the sense of emotional contact with Brady
and Laura-- and Brady and Lisa.
And this chaotic world of childhood and it was very,
very important facet of my life,
I'm going to show you a little snippet of those early days.
[Background music] Things have changed dramatically
when my son Brady was born, you know, the *** hit the fan.
[Laughter]
>> I was a new father, I felt excited
and depressed at the same time.
Here I am by the home with a baby and what?
I mean make baby pictures.
I was totally confused and slowly it daunted me
that I should just deal with what the present was.
And that's what I did, I decided that what was
around me would become the subject.
And I went to school at a very sort of hip edgy school,
Yale and, you know, too cool for words, you know.
Not the kind of stuff that I began to do was not quite
that stuff but it was dear to my heart.
So, I began to look at the world as if I were Brady.
As if the world was from a child's point of view
so these are some of the early pictures I made.
Even close ups of, you know, what we all know.
Every-- I know everyone had this ball.
[Laughter]
>> I'm sure of it.
There's a movie, a great movie called Citizen Kane
and Rosebud was that guy's thing.
You know, portraits, things that I would never have thought
of making, you know, a portrait of a milk bottle.
But it was interesting to me to make pictures of things
that I knew that were, you know, solidly in front of me rather
than abstract ideas about, you know, art.
Then a lot of these childhood objects began to make me think
about other little still [inaudible] at home
that it could make-- that was, you know,
as a good father, I was stuck at home.
So I couldn't go to see a waterfall
but I could see water pouring out of a pot, you know.
And, you know what, it's quite amazing
when you start looking closely to what's around you,
how different and surprising things are.
So I'd be-- you know, began to sort of make long exposures
of very ordinary events around the house including water
and then water could do all kinds
of things like an alphabet.
Or the way when we were children we would look
at things like this, right?
We were like, oh, and you're mother is saying,
"Got to get to school and you were like, "Wow, look at that."
[Laughter]
>> Right? Well, as an artist I guess you can give yourself
permission to say, "Look at that" and then have a camera.
If a lawyer starts doing that too much they'll put him away.
Then the optical sort of the water pictures began to sort
of suggest a nature of a water that had optical components
like this glass of wine became a very rudimentary camera
in a way, we see in the lens, a crude lens look at a window.
So I thought, "That would be interesting,
how about my own optics?"
By the way, if you wear glasses, you'll get this picture.
So it's sort of a secret amongst glass wearers,
if you know what I mean, yeah, I see people nodding there.
So, it was a very interesting period of my life
where I thought why don't I fool around with the--
instead of the nature of seeing itself, you know,
with cameras including a self-portrait
with me being seen up there somewhere.
Oh, okay, you see it.
Anyway, I'm being photographed by my camera,
I'm being photographed by me.
Interesting optical games.
Then in 1991, I made a-- by the way I was a--
I had began to teach at a place called Massachusetts College
of Art and for several years before this period,
I taught photography by converting, you know,
rooms into camera obscuras and things like that just
to show them the very properties of photography
and how beautiful the idea of photography was and how simply
and how mysterious at once it was.
So I made this picture of a very expensive camera called Martini
and Rossi, I don't know if you've heard of it.
[Laughter] It's very famous Italian camera.
Anyway, cheap box, with a cheap lens,
yet [inaudible] something absolutely pristine
and pure and gorgeous.
And this picture lead me to think, "Wow, look at this,
the photography itself could be a subject."
So I thought, "Okay, maybe what I've been doing with my classes
which was to turn whole classroom
into a camera obscura."
Maybe that is the subject as well.
And essentially, a camera obscura is any size room,
its small box or room this big with a small opening looking
out unto something bright, you know, bright scene outside.
Nature, I mean, it came with the place.
It's not something, some guys in Sony said,
"Oh let's imagine that-- " I'm not religious at all
but it's sort of a God given thing that the physics
to the world works in a way that a small opening,
looking out in a small dark-- in a room that's dark looking
on into the scene will project an upside
down image of the world.
And so I thought, "Wouldn't it be interesting to try
to make a picture of that."
In art history people talk about camera obscuras all the time.
But I've never seen a photograph of the event itself.
So I began to make such things, you know,
I've [inaudible] invited to fit friends houses,
who had cool views like the Empire State building.
Put-- poke a small whole looking out
and then this image would come into the room.
Because it's visible but it's quite dim,
the exposures back then were as long as 8 hours which is--
I like the idea of a working class number, you know.
[Laughter] So-- and also I could set it up in the morning,
walk around New York, see a movie, have lunch, you know,
all that and come back.
But it was fascinating--
I felt like I had discovered photography in way
because I never seen this kind of usage of it.
This is my father and then a sister in a very large apartment
in New York City and that's the image that came in.
Now, mind you, this is just-- at this point, just a whole, okay,
that brings that in which is a remarkable gift.
And it's so weird that not
that many people really know what this is.
This is Time Square, Italy.
I went back to Cuba in 2002 after 40 years, this is Havana.
And this is a very ancient photograph,
in fact one of the earliest pictures ever made, 1840.
Photography was officially invented in 1839 by a couple
of French people, Louis Daguerre
and then a British photographer named Fox Talbot.
And Fox Talbot, in 1840 from his place,
place called Lacock Abbey made this picture
from a second floor.
And I was invited to photograph in his house
in London-- in England.
So I decided to try to make-- find that room and I found it.
So I made a camera obscura of that view and it just felt
like I could have died then, I was like, okay, the beginning
and now to be in the presence of such vantage point.
It was really quite, quite wonderful.
I've also been interested in books obviously, you know,
everyone likes reading but of books
for me have been physically a very interesting thing
to look at.
So one day I was looking at this book
of El Greco, he's a painter.
A book of his paintings and I saw this gorgeous,
shimmering light falling off of the page.
And I was instructing that maybe that effect could be a picture
and I made it and I loved the effect a lot.
Then I remember in 1993,
thinking maybe there are other book pictures that be made.
So I made another one, and another one
and you know how it is when you--
you know, the children's book when you--
if you give a mouse a cookie.
[Laughter] Yeah, and in fact that works like that,
the world works that if you started looking
and paying attention to something, it's expensive.
And I began to look a lot of books and make all kinds
of images that had something to do with the narrative
of the books but also their physicality,
their architectural nature.
This is not a very good slide but this is A Farewell to Arms
by Hemingway, it's a very important book for me.
Because in high school, in New York,
this terrific teacher helped me learn English by giving me a lot
of Hemingway novels and we would discuss it.
And Hemingway such a great writer to learn English
with because his words are simple.
He's not an abstract writer like Thomas Pinchon
or something, you know.
His words are like simple.
So I learned to get by in English
through a lot of his novels.
And then these are more book pictures.
[ Pause ]
This is the first page from-- Lisa, help me.
[Inaudible Remark] What?
Delta cities, yeah, which can also-- this is--
this is the kind of first words that can apply to any era
but especially good now, the best of times
and the worst of times.
And it's lift from behind so the idea of words leaking
from behind was really interesting to me.
Simple stuff, this is window light, a table, a book.
And when you simplify things
like that then creativity can sort of have a field day
in a way, you can-- you know,
I wanted to make something interesting out of it
so maybe I made a 3 minute exposure while I rotated the
book in a circle, just like that, I mean just simple.
But I wanted to create the idea
of a constellation instead of swirling.
Our fine funny books, in 1930 and 31 there were 5 thoughts.
[Laughter] Which sounds right.
[Laughter] And some books are so beyond their bookness.
So damaged that they're just barely holding on to that title.
The book damaged by water.
After a lot of these book pictures I--
someone suggest that I illustrate Alice in Wonderland
for a book and I've always--
oh no, I grew up in the 60s
so Alice was a very important book for a lot of us.
[Laughter] If you know what I mean.
[Laughter] Jefferson Airplane and stuff like that.
So I made-- I decided to do something rather crude which is
to have cutouts made of Alice and have cardboard Alice's
and characters be represented in a world
where books were sort of the landscape.
So this is obviously the first image
of the rabbit going down the hole.
And I had fun drilling into books
and doing things like that.
[ Pause ]
Oh within the architecture of books.
[ Pause ]
A paper seems to be a big concern for me,
I love the idea how the paper can be symbolic like a book.
It takes you to some other level.
It can also exist in money, its symbolic paper.
They're just like the book.
So I went-- for a while I was really interested
in photographing money.
And-- who doesn't think about it, right?
From the poorest to the riches.
We're all sort of in some ways enslaved by that idea but--
so, this is a series of pictures.
This is one dollar, five, this is a new bill,
it's a twenty five, it's coming out soon.
[Laughter] That's twenty five, that's sixty dollars.
Its going to jump big now, it's 40 thousand dollars,
it's a dirty thing isn't it?
Okay, so now let me jump really big now, 40 thousand,
this is 7 million dollars.
That's sort of what it looks like.
[Laughter] Now you're dying to ask right?
[Laughter] It's in my basement.
[Laughter] No, it's not, in case there's somebody--
IRS people here.
[Laughter] Something else that I've been working on is
for this book that the Museum of Modern Art, New York,
they usually pair-- every year they pair an artist
with a writer to do a specialization book.
And they thought Oliver Sacks was a terrific neurologist
and I would do something interesting
and there was a terrific book by Oliver Sacks called The Island
of the Colorblind where he goes to Micronesia and tries
to solve this mystery of colorblindness
that beset the population there.
Anyway, in the book it talks a lot about cycads and ferns
and weird vegetation, gorgeous, weird,
strange prehistoric stuff.
And so I-- okay I thought, "Well,
am I going to take pictures of vegetation for this book?"
Then I thought about-- this is a Fox Talbot picture,
it's a photogram and if--
a photogram is the simplest way you can make an image
in the dark room you take a piece of paper, put a leaf down,
flash some light on it and you get a kind of a cliche of it.
This is also, early, early work and I--
I was really inspired by this work.
Then I thought about this terrific method of making images
that a few French painters use in the 1850s.
People like Millet and Corot I mean great,
great painters thought that they would incorporate photography
into their works by taking glass, right?
Smoking at so that it would become dark [inaudible].
And on the glass they would do these beautiful drawings.
So essentially they were making a hand negative out of glass.
Then they would actually print it on photographic paper.
So you have this beautiful combination
of drawing and photography.
So this is a negative by Corot that-- that becomes that.
But it's this great hybrid of painting and photography.
This is another one.
And this is some of the trees that Oliver Sacks talked
about where this hybrid prehistoric ferns and cycads.
So I thought I would then try to make my own cliche there
which means glass picture.
So I borrowed a lot of very, sort of exotic ferns and,
you know, cycads from places and I decided to ink glass,
8 by 10 pieces of glass.
Ink it, let it dry a bit and then press ferns and cycads
on the ink itself at a various stages to create a kind
of an illusion of vegetation.
So this is some of the pictures I was able to make.
So once I got a negative, I mean black ink pressings sometimes 20
or 30 times to create density.
I had a negative.
And of course, you know, well the negative you can make
on a positive so I had the images scanned
at a very high resolution, I make prints of it.
So I'll show you some work that came out of it.
[ Pause ]
Very different from any kind of work I've done before
and my hands were dirty.
You know I was like a real artist, you know.
[Laughter] It felt fun to be kind
of scratching when it wasn't good.
[ Pause ]
Okay. In 2006, this is I always--
sorry, if you heard this story before.
Forgive me but 2006, I got a call from this man
who owns a Palazzo in a Grand Canal in Venice.
And you haven't been to Venice you got to go,
like 'cause its wonder.
So this guy [inaudible] calls me up and says, I've got a Palazzo
in Venice and would you like to come
and make some pictures here, camera obscura pictures and,
you know, we'll pay for everything
and that kind of thing.
And I'm like, "No, I'm going to be in Detroit next week."
[Laughter] Yeah, of course.
So my wife, daughter and I went to Venice
and found a terrific bedroom in his place.
And color began to play in my pictures.
So this is the picture-- this is the picture that came out of it.
So color began to be a very important thing
for me, complicating it.
In [inaudible] now it's Rococo, it's just over the top.
Then I went back the next year and Salute,
this church was being worked on.
And I thought, oh no, but it was interesting.
It was like a whole new church.
Then [inaudible] who basically knows Venice in and out said,
"You know, I know-- this is a kind of like a painting"
but he's, "I know the guy who works there,
that window over there."
[Laughter] So, that's the thing about Europe,
you can actually look at the painting goes,
"Yeah, Joe lives there."
[Laughter] You know, it actually is like that.
So we found the place-- [Laughter] And I realized,
that kind of led to himself was probably on this floor,
looking at this, you know, this part of the plaza,
[inaudible] from that point of view.
So I made a picture.
And few things have changed here.
Instead of just the whole, I'm using a lens
to make things sharper.
I'm using color, and what else is new?
[Inaudible Remark] [Inaudible] that up.
Yeah, so I found a found a way to write a--
you know-- so, radical changes.
But it really feel very [inaudible] and this still film
which it took about 7 hours to make.
These are not people.
They are-- those are kiosks, you know, just-- but this--
that's terrible, anyway.
Doesn't take it.
Here is thousands of people lining
up to get into the church.
And then I find another place in Venice, the crazy apartment,
decorated in Colombian jungle style on the Grand Canal.
So you're seeing Grand Canal and--
[Laughter] The park which kind of reminds me of this--
I always-- I really like the idea of a room being complicated
or room being sort of made into something else
and that certainly was.
Recent New York City pictures.
Now, this is myself, my sister, my parents, and cousins
but back there with the arrow is, that's the Plaza Hotel.
Back then, we couldn't even get into the lobby but just
to show you that I grew up with the sense
of New York being this eventual playground
so I made some pictures from the Plaza Hotel looking
Central Park.
And three season so far,
winter is not happening in the east, people.
[Laughter] So I've missed winter.
But this is summer, fall, and spring, I'm waiting for snow.
This is another view there recently made, Time Square,
then this Manhattan Bridge.
And now, the last change that I've made
in this photography side no longer use film which took
from 5 to 7 hours to expose, it's the nature of film.
Film doesn't respond to light when it's very low,
it takes longer than you think.
So now, I'm using a digital pack which can make an exposure
of 7 hours to 5, 10 minutes now which is,
for me, very dramatic change.
First of all, I'm getting older so I don't have the time, right?
[Laughter] So that helps.
But I'm also getting images that have a sense
of a specific sense of time, light.
So before I-- wouldn't have been able to make this kind
of series, this is a morning view of the bridge,
afternoon, and the evening.
And it was great to have the ability to--
I like the way [inaudible] could record specific light
with painting, then some camera obscura pictures in Italy.
[ Pause ]
This is the French Academy in Rome,
be say apparently wrote Carmen in this room.
[ Pause ]
This is the Mayor's room in Rome which looks on to the form.
[ Pause ]
And now, this is sort of the most recent incarnation
of the camera obscura idea.
This is a camera, it's a portable, you know,
sort of camera obscura which people had Fox Talbot
and even earlier, even before photography have been invented
the people used.
Essentially, this thing looked at the world
through a very crude lens but projected the image,
so the straight up and then into a piece of glass.
So, if you put tracing paper on the glass,
you could actually see mountains and palaces or whatever
that was possible for artists to draw things
in perspective, very useful device.
And this is a typical artist trying to use a device
like this to trace the world.
This is the drawing that Fox Talbot made
with such a device in 1835.
And luckily, for us, he was a terrible artist, I mean,
this is just crude as hell.
[Laughter] And this is when, in fact, he says to himself,
"I wish I could retain the image he was seeing on the glass,
I wish I could keep this."
In a sense, I want to make photograph and he went back
to England and worked on the idea of fixing that image
which became photography 1939.
This was also a way to draw the world
with these weird tent cameras,
this is again before photography,
a periscope type thing
that would [inaudible] the image right on to your drawing pad
and you could trace it.
It was very hip.
[Laughter] Everybody was doing it.
[Laughter] So I thought my assistant, CJ Heyliger
and I were thinking, "Wouldn't it be interesting to have,
instead of rooms, why don't we have something that we can carry
around and just put it anywhere we want?"
I mean, not the White House but, you know, so why don't we--
this is some photography coating film inside this tent,
this is Henry, William Henry Jackson, one of the sort
of great American photographers.
His tent was not to make pictures but to coat film
but tents in the landscape have been around forever.
So CJ and I came up with this weird thing
and it's fairly portable tent, 14 feet at diameter,
with a hole on the very top.
And we worked this thing where a periscope-like optics shoots
out of the hole at the center and looks at the world.
Instead of having a wall, now, I have the ground.
So this is our first experiment in Texas, it's a lot of work.
[ Pause ]
I actually helped them out, I was filming so I'm not--
[Laughter] So this is the sort of the view that we had
in this terrific West Texas landscape, just gorgeous.
And this is the image that happened.
So onto the desert floor itself, an image gets projected.
So instead of a wall, now, I have the ground.
So the idea of merging new by landscape onto the stones,
and the grass, and the twigs became just such a fun new way
of looking at the world.
And again, I've never seen that kind of--
and again, this is all natural,
this is not what my daughter can do in Photoshop in 10 seconds,
you know, oh yeah, Texas, yeah, whatever.
[Laughter] Right?
It's not whatever.
It's a lot of work carrying the tent
around to make something naturally freaky.
[Laughter] And it's fun to do it when you're there,
it's extraordinary, you feel like you're in some alien world.
So this is some others, this is in Maine.
[ Pause ]
Big Bend National Park which I love, this is the Mexico
on the left, the US on the right, the Real Grande in there.
[ Pause ]
It's about a 125 degrees inside the tent.
[Laughter] And CJ and I almost passed out, there was--
and I thought also why didn't I take the tent to rooftops
in New York City 'cause rooftops have very interesting surfaces.
And we went to Park Avenue
and there was a rooftop with pebbles.
So this is looking east in New York and of course it looks
like a Serra painting, I mean it's pixilated.
[ Pause ]
And this is my sister and my cousin for fun and to get away
from the house, my parents went
around Manhattan every weekend, we-- that was so fun.
So it [inaudible] 100s of times.
And this is a picture of mine, I love photographing bridges
and the idea of New York and--
no, New York is just like a picture, you know.
So this is a recent picture from a rooftop
on the Manhattan side look in the Brooklyn Bridge.
And you notice that there are clouds in there
because of the digital technology now,
a short exposure, I mean to actually get specific moments
like clouds which for me is-- it's a big plus.
A year later, we found a Russian who lives
on the other side with-- in his rooftop.
Then, here's a thought, well, am I-- am I limited to places?
So this is a wonderful Francis Frith picture, beautiful image
of human prints, the best.
So-- but why not do that?
[Laughter] Why not?
[Laughter] So I'm hoping someday to--
when maybe when each gets a little cooler--
[Laughter] In many ways to make pictures like that, you know,
revisit important sites in the history of photography.
This is on Italian tent camera pictures.
We actually-- it was crazy, we actually got permission
to set this up in Florence in the midst of a 1,000 tourist--
it was-- they were looking at us
like we were selling something, you know [laughs].
[Laughter] We should have sold something.
[Laughter] So our view was of the baptist street.
And this is from the outskirts of Florence.
And Yellowstone and Grand Tetons which we went recently too.
This is sidewalk near the Grand Tetons
so you get this pebbly surface, terrific view, just set up there
in this beautiful lake.
I asked Aimee, one of my assistants to stand
over the edge, she's in red there.
[ Pause ]
This is a William Henry Jackson photograph of the Grand Canyon
of Yellowstone, one of the first people to actually see it.
So I'm really liking the fact that I'm sort
of in the trajectory of these people, William Henry Jackson
and Thomas Moran who made glorious paintings
of this place.
So we set it there and this is what came out of that.
Some new book pictures, a children's book,
all the page is showing, Farewell to Arms again,
the book keeps occurring to me.
This is the first and last page of Farewell to Arms,
hopper book, the last page of Ulysses, James Joyce, sorry,
a bad thing to do to a book.
[Laughter]
[ Pause ]
I don't know what this means, my shrink will probably say,
you really messed up here,
it's like a pregnant book or something.
So-- [Laughter] A small book inside a large book?
Dictionary, 2 intertwined dictionaries.
And I'm going to-- and soon, I've been thinking
about making pictures
in different ways especially cutting things out
and making collage-like images, and thinking about some
of this people, this guy [inaudible] was a really
terrific architect in the, you know, 1780s, he made drawings
of impossible architecture just glorious and impossible.
So he, you know, I've been looking
at this kind of apocalyptic work.
And Diego Rivera who I-- that mean there's no one better
in terms of mural work the idea of collaging different aspects
of a city, things that could not really be seen but sort
of imagined or, you know, the history of Mexico hold together
in one kind of new collage.
And this beautiful [inaudible], I've never seen before
but this great painting that evolves almost
like a cutout idea of, you know, industry.
And Brueghel again, an impossible architecture.
So and especially, this man, Gustav Dore who I love--
he made hundreds and hundreds of illustrations of the bible,
you know, the divine comedy, Romeo and Juliet, I mean, he--
crazy it sounded and dramatic as hell,
everything was like, oh, super electric.
So I've been looking at his work and a man
in [inaudible] whose work is also from the 1700s,
1750s-60s of some
of the impossible Roman architecture invented,
especially his prisons.
So what I thought was that maybe I would take--
I bought a lot of this cheap books and I would escapade
into the books, cutting-- well, this is--
it's a new way for me to make pictures I've been quite
into it.
And so I also [inaudible] the cutouts, well, this is about 10
of his prisons that are being cut into one another,
so a new prison, if you will has resulted.
[ Pause ]
New cities.
And this is a very recent one I just came up with.
This is all [inaudible] drawings or etchings that have made
into a kind of a metropolis.
And I'm thinking about why the ground have allowed these
pictures goes by to this early picture, my daughter who's here,
she was quite little with her monkey there and my son
but I made this picture where I tried
to imagine the ground being kind of a house
and I love the picture because it has a kind of a--
it's nearby, its not to that, you know, it's this place
that I knew and the ground having some kind
of meaning below us, and how important it is in the art
and psychology, you know,
how we understand the ground that we live in.
This is an early picture by Jackson as well of the great,
you know-- [Inaudible Remark]
>> Yeah, I mean, its 1840-- 1850 something, and here he is,
just like people are actually very near it.
And we actually got permission to do this.
It was sort of weird and this ranger was telling us, "When?"
So we're inside the tent CJ and I are in the side,
as I think like, "I lost now, I lost now-- " and he's like, "no,
not-- not yet, not yet, no," and he nailed it.
[Laughter] He nailed it.
And everyone's looking and was
like what kind of a picture is that?
But this-- it's a strange new way of narrating an event,
and for me, that's important to visit, I mean,
all [inaudible] has been photographed,
what, a billion times?
How to make a picture that makes it, at least, for me, new,
and that's important to my work.
This is-- we made 2 [inaudible] Joshua Tree 3 days ago,
and we love Joshua Tree.
God, heaven.
This one, the next day, it was too windy to photograph
but this two, I'm really quite happy with.
I'm going to end with something up in doing the last week.
I really like challenges of something very minimal what
to do with a bunch of paper, you know,
rather than what's the meaning of the world, you know, no,
look at paper and see what could happen there.
And I've been thinking about making pictures
with something quite simple like that, that can have a sort
of a meaning beyond the material but this is two rims of paper.
Then I thought, you know,
what don't I do a self portrait with this technique?
And it took me a while to figure it out
and Aimee who is my assistant.
She's compulsive, you know, I'm impulsive--
it seems like none of us do it right.
So I made this picture.
[Laughter] This is my self-portrait
which is rather freaky.
[Laughter] Something like emperor aide or something.
[Laughter] But it felt like to take something this [inaudible]
and to make it like architecture or I don't know-- marble.
Then it struck me that maybe I'd really do believe that the idea
of self is always connected
to the materials of the world for me.
Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you everyone.
There is a reception following at the Art Gallery so don't miss
on that, but Abe has generously volunteered the time here to--
>> 10 dollars, of course.
[Laughter]
>> We're looking at it.
>> Anybody, just say it, I can't even see you
so well, so just yell it out.
>> Can I ask you about your tent pictures?
>> Sure.
>> If what's coming through the top is landing specifically
on the ground--
>> That's right.
>> How do you photograph a ground from an angle
and happened to be some--
>> No, that was a technical challenge that CJ and I had
to sort of figure out.
I mean, we're not right above it
because that would give a shadow, so we're able
to get just out of the light of--
you know, the line of the light to be outside of it.
And we stopped down.
>> So you're just feeling
that it's the angle skewed somehow in the [inaudible]?
>> A little bit, we're actually able to get fairly flat
and then digitally, we just kind
of correct a little bit, but its-- it works.
I mean, ideally, it would be great to have it straight down,
but it's just impossible.
>> Right.
>> But I think we figure out the right angle, you know,
we creep into it until we start seeing the shadow come in.
>> And one last question.
How do you think is your-- what [inaudible] your tent made
out of kind of the covered in light [inaudible]?
>> It's fairly thick plastic and it's white on the outside,
black on the inside and it's made for observa--
>> Burning man.
[Inaudible Remark] [Laughter] Yeah,
and these people are doing weird stuff inside the--
oh, I don't know about so.
[Laughter] Yeah?
[Inaudible Remark] I'm sorry?
>> Were you using 35 millimeter?
>> 35.
>> No, what's the--
>> What are you, crazy?
[Laughter] No, no, no.
I'm using a digital camera [inaudible] of phase one,
its 40 megapixels and with a medium for my camera.
So it's-- we have a laptop in there, we can see everything,
it's very, you see it right away.
So-- [Inaudible Remark] No, no 35.
I did that 30 years ago.
>> Would you find it since you switch to digital
that the highlights can be over exposed in that sort of thing?
>> No.
>> You must be careful.
>> Not if you're careful.
>> Okay.
>> No-- yes?
>> Regarding your camera obscura, how do you--
>> Are you the Jamaican?
>> Yeah.
>> Okay. [Laughter]
>> [Inaudible], do you physically,
literally make the hole in somebody's wall, I mean,
how do you-- how does this happen?
>> Oh, no.
[Laughter] No, I think I would have been in Facebooks
and "do not let this guy in."
[Laughter] [Inaudible Remark] No, no.
It's just the window and plastic and then we cut
into the plastic, you know, it's a lot easier that way.
[Laughter]
>> What kind of film then is used
to project the-- [Inaudible Remark]
>> It's a phase one back.
>> Put the camera and stuff.
>> The camera is a Mamiya format camera with a [inaudible] in it.
So especially, it's just a digital file that were making.
But it's super straight, I'm not putting, you know, elephants fly
in the sky I mean, I'm a very straight photographer using a
digital recording device but of what I'm seeing, I'm not trying
to put, you know, crazy stuff in it.
I'm just trying to be true to the facts.
[ Inaudible Remark ]
[Laughter] I will have to kill you.
[Laughter] It's-- all right, diopters
and you can get diopters that will focus on certain distances.
So, but mind you, its taking me years and years to work this
out so, I don't like talking about that
because the technical stuff while extremely important was
driven by an intellectual artistic concern of mine.
And when it becomes just-- oh, use that and you're done.
It cuts the elemental need to arrive at this type of solution.
So it's a very hard thing to talk about because its--
doesn't quite explain my hunger for how I led to it, but anyway.
>> Hey.
>> Yes?
>> You engaged a lot with the physicality of books
but I didn't see anything that engages with the words so much
in terms of-- that has always been a kind of a story topic
between pictures and what's made up and--
and so, I know like [inaudible] a lot of work about this.
So I just want [inaudible] your take on--
>> About words?
>> About words and how they intensified with images.
>> Well, and actually it's interesting 'cause I've recently
began to photograph very close up words, American--
American words like Abraham Lincoln writing
about slavery in New Orleans.
I got this-- I didn't get it but this letter that exists
where he's sort of saying, "What is going on in here?"
And I photographed a very close up--
slaves, Abraham Lincoln writing about slaves and it's very hard
to make it interesting, I'm still trying
to make the physicality of the writing,
the visual interesting but it's hard.
So I'm struggling with that, you know,
so I don't know, that answers it.
>> How big a hole does it take
for the camera obscura [inaudible]?
>> Something like that.
[Laughter]
>> So, what made you decide to use a camera obscura
to a big whole camera and also why not do multiple exposure?
>> Multiple exposures-- how?
What do you mean?
>> It's a-- taking one photo of something, and then taking
under photo of the same part of the--
>> And just-- in the computer, just sandwich in the two?
>> No.
>> It's multiple exposure and say, you know--
>> Yeah, you just stay at home, you know, smoking dope
and just like, oh, yeah, yeah.
The pyramids and, you know, LA, yeah, whatever.
[Laughter] I've left instructions that if I do that,
I should be shot in the head.
[Laughter] No, I'm not interested in that kind
of easy access to craziness.
I want to work like Henry, you know, Jackson to arrive
of something quite contemporary, but I think it's important
that the truth, some kind of truth is--
you know, is established.
For me it's important, so it wouldn't be interesting
if the pigments of Los Angeles in fact would tire that ***.
[Laughter] Aren't we?
I mean every eye we see is crazy, crazier and crazier
and detaches our sensibility to the world to make craziness
to just kind of a product, you know, so I'm trying
to do some quite, you know, hard to get at, but so-- anyway.
Yes?
[Inaudible Remark]
There-- well, there's people around the-- all faithful.
[Laughter] That is Aimee on the left.
[Laughter] I'm not that interested
in people, I mean, I subject.
[Laughter]
>> Yeah, me too.
>> I mean I-- for me, I mean I love portraits,
I love Nicolas Nixon who's a neighbor of mine,
I mean I love his portraits and all that
but I'm just not drawn to--
I like the physics of the world and how it works.
I mean, my self portrait, that's me.
[Laughter] I may begin to do self portraits in that style,
but I don't like the idea that people are so changeable.
I like the gravity works in a certain way
and it's dependable and people are not.
[Inaudible Remark] Yes?
>> What is your favorite location to shoot?
>> Favorite location?
I love Yellowstone, that was just incredible,
I mean it's such a great park that, you know,
I want to do more parks so we're going to Yosemite next,
the Grand Canyon and a couple other places, so anyway.
[Inaudible Remark]
>> Yes?
>> Have you tried to put your tent in that middle of the water
and reflect whatever you see?
>> I thought about that and it's very hard because if it is too--
well, actually if it's too deep we'll sink.
[Laughter]
>> It's like this deep.
>> Yeah, hard because the surface
of water doesn't really reflect an image,
it has to be quite shallow but I'm thinking
about making creating a kind of a pool in the middle.
>> Yeah.
>> That would be interesting, even a little fire.
[Inaudible Remark]
>> Yeah, I know, water would be very interesting,
it's a challenge but thank you, its good idea, yeah.
[Laughter]
>> How much of your craft is in relation to a personal reward
in contrast to the prevalence of a DSLR
and a populous creating everyone the [inaudible],
what's your take on that?
>> That everyone is a photographer?
>> No, that you use so much time developing this tent.
>> Yeah.
>> Now, in relation to your imagery and [inaudible]
to that tent like if you take on that?
>> Right. Well, I mean, I don't know, you know, who [inaudible]?
He's a terrific painter.
>> Yeah.
>> But he once-- I heard him talk and he said, you know,
the best-- and now, I'm going to end with this.
The best method is to start, everyone starts to gather lots
of people, I want to be artist.
When you get to a crossroad, take the harder road
and you'll have fewer people with you.
[Laughter] And then the next one,
take the harder one then you'll have even fewer.
I believe in that, that I'd rather make something
that is just, you know, that it takes a lot of work and
but it's worth it by the end.
Thank you for coming.
[Applause]