Eric Kunsman
I don’t say this sort of thing often, but I think that Eric Kunsman is my hero. There’s a lot to unpack here because it probably isn’t for what you might think (though there are plenty of reasons for many to feel the same). Not only is Eric an entrepreneur, running his printing and bookmaking company, but he produces some excellent fine art bodies of work with intention and passion, using both film and digital means applied thoughtfully and with reason. Couple this with the fact that he is also an educator at the Rochester Institute of Technology, as well as a workshop leader and lecturer. One other thing - he is a family man who speaks highly of his place as a husband and father. So my reasons are not for these things specifically, it’s for all of them at once and managing the time it takes to not just do them, but do them very well. I envy people like him that make it look easy (I’m sure it isn’t), and I swear that the next time I see him I’m putting him in a headlock until he spills the beans on his secret to accomplishing so much. I think I can take him…
Now, this interview is a reposting of one that I’d done with Eric in 2019 for Analog Forever Magazine. He managed this as effortlessly as everything else he does, but as an addition here (and yet another reason to show his work and process) I wanted to bring up his latest series, Fake News Archive Project, to everyone. Make sure to check the update at the end of the original interview below. Once again, Eric doesn’t simply create the work, he makes it a three-volume book project and a way for it to be interactive in your community. I won’t say more here, as it’s best left for him to articulate. Basically, Eric knows exactly what he’s doing, how best to produce and market the work, and all while making it look easy before going home to spend time with his family. You get it now, right? Can you see that there is no question about why I would want to add Eric Kunsman to this roster of amazing artists? If you still don’t believe me, read on and you will. Oh, and Eric, take a damn nap for once, will ya?!
Bio -
Eric T. Kunsman (b. 1975) was born and raised in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. While in high school, he was heavily influenced by the death of the steel industry and its place in American history. The exposure to the work of Walker Evans during this time hooked Eric onto photography. Eric had the privilege to study under Lou Draper, who became Eric’s most formative mentor. He credits Lou with influencing his approach as an educator, photographer, and contributing human being.
Currently, he is a photographer and book artist based out of Rochester, New York. Eric works at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) as a Lecturer for the Visual Communications Studies Department at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf and is an adjunct professor for the School of Photographic Arts & Sciences.
In addition to lectures, he provides workshops on topics including his artistic practice, digital printing, and digital workflow processes. He also provides industry seminars for the highly regarded Printing Applications Lab at RIT. His photographs and books are exhibited internationally and are in several collections. He currently owns Booksmart Studio, which is a fine art digital printing studio, specializing in numerous techniques and services for photographers and book artists on a collaborative basis.
Eric holds his MFA in Book Arts/Printmaking from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia and holds an MS in Electronic Publishing/Graphic Arts Media, BS in Biomedical Photography, BFA in Fine Art photography all from the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York.
There's no “given,” formula for what demands Eric’s focus as a photographer. Eric is as drawn to the landscapes and neglected towns of the American southwest as he is to the tensions of struggling rustbelt cities in the U.S. northeast. Always Eric is attracted to objects left behind, especially those that hint at a unique human narrative, a story waiting to be told. Eric’s current work explores one of those relics: working payphones hidden in plain sight throughout the neighborhood near his studio in Rochester, NY. Associates suggested they signified a high crime area. This project's shown Eric something very different.
Interview -
Michael Kirchoff: Thanks for joining us here, Eric. First off, how about some background on what interested you enough about photography to make it your career? Was there any influence from family or any individual who inspired you to explore the medium?
Eric Kunsman: In all honesty, once I picked up a camera in 11th grade I never put it down. From the time I was a very young age, maybe 1st or 2nd grade, I knew I wanted to be an artist. In fact, during the school year when it was not wrestling season, I airbrushed T-shirts at a local mall, and later at an amusement park. The irony is that airbrushing helped pay my way through school at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), as I used the funds to pay for my supplies.
While in high school, Bethlehem Steel was slowly closing and many photojournalists descended on my hometown. It was one day in my high school photography class that my teacher, Mr. King, showed us the work of Walker Evans and the images he took of the Lehigh Valley, including Bethlehem. It was at that point I realized how photography can be used to shape and document history. I was hooked!
As for family influences, my father had a 35mm camera but I never remember seeing him pick it up. My father was curious that I decided to take a photography class in high school since I had always been drawing or painting, since as early as he could remember. My father was a roofer and never had time or energy to explore his desire to photograph, so to this day I do not know if that was his interest. My parents’ focus was working to provide for their children and to make sure my brothers and I got to every wrestling tournament. Another family influence was my Aunt Karen who was a Rhode Island School of Design graduate, and was always giving us drawings or etchings as Christmas gifts when I was a young child. This had an influence on me and helped me to realize that adults can also make art, and that it wasn’t only for kids.
MK: Since we are doing this for an analog photography publication, I wonder if your start in photography included things like processing and printing your own images in a darkroom, or was it something that came to you later in life as a different way to express your ideas?
EK: My start in photography began completely in the darkroom and I learned from some incredible mentors. Luckily, I have had photography as my lifeline since high school, and was able to study at the Rochester Institute of Technology. I spent many nights working and sleeping in the darkrooms. I had the luxury of studying with Willie Osterman, who was an assistant to Ansel Adams, so I learned the Zone System thoroughly through his class. Owen Butler from RIT was another proponent in the way that I approach my photography. However, no single mentor had a bigger impact on me than Lou Draper. Through Lou’s mentorship, I learned more about my visualization process, approach to being an educator, what it means to be a photographer, how society can influence us, and how we can shape some part of society for the greater good. Lou Draper was a master in the darkroom, as he was one of W. Eugene Smith’s print assistants, and I watched him work his hands in the chemistry like they were magic.
From 1993-1999, I printed everything in the darkroom and have never stopped shooting film. In 1999, is when I started to print exclusively in the digital darkroom with Iris printers, before Epson had sponsored my Masters of Science thesis in 2000, which was on high density black & white digital printing, utilizing inkjet printers. Again, I have never stopped shooting film for my projects, but I do shoot digital at times when I do not need my genuine creative/visualization process. However, the ultimate control I have within the digital darkroom is the last part of my visualization process, which provides the control I desire to create the emotional attachment I try to provide the viewer. Currently, when I work in the darkroom, I utilize digital negatives and non-silver processes. Non-silver prints allow me to work with my hands just as the books I produce with traditional bookbinding techniques.
MK: What is it that inspires you to decide upon a particular project?
EK: Honestly, that is project dependent, as each project has been motivated by certain life influences or environmental/societal circumstances. Growing up in Bethlehem, PA I was influenced by history and the role that Bethlehem held on shaping the United States. As I watched the steel industry die, it captivated my interest to dig deeper into photography and the influences it has on society and history. Since that early influence, I noticed that there is either a sociological or historical component that triggers my projects.
I truly believe that my projects have found me due to my life influences and that I never plan on what is next. It puts a smile on my face when I think about the influences for each of my projects. I can truly say that each fork in the road has led me to be where I am today and I truly appreciate each moment that lead up to where I am. The bad influences are what have helped me to create certain bodies of work along with the good life experiences.
MK: Do you study what others are doing, and do you find their influence in your own image making?
EK: I often look at images, whether on social media, the library at RIT, or my own photography book library. I don’t really study the work to look for inspiration or influence for my own work. Instead, I like to know what other people are working on to see the contemporary landscape. My work is more influenced by relationships I have created with fellow photographers and discussions we hold along with my students at RIT. My work is also often influenced by simple conversations I have with the individuals in the communities that I am documenting. One of my favorite parts of the Felicific Calculus series is the dialog that starts with random strangers on the street (from ALL walks of life), once they learn that I am documenting the payphones of Rochester, NY. I have learned so much from these individuals, and our conversations serve as more of an influence than any photographs I looked at previously. The payphone project and the surrounding conversations truly humbled me unlike any other project to date. In return, I have an attachment with these inanimate objects I am photographing because of the dialog surrounding the project. The influence of this project has started to take over my entire family as my daughter, Viviana (4), son Bryce (9), and my wife Sandra, have all become involved with this project in one way or another. At this time, my daughter Viviana is my biggest critic and supporter for this project.
Thou Art Will Give, from Thou Art…, Will Give…
Hopeful, from Thou Art…, Will Give…
Ashes, from Thou Art…, Will Give…
MK: I wanted to go over a couple of bodies of work from you that have employed the use of film to make the work, and the first is Thou Art…, Will Give…, which is a quite ambitious project in its execution. To start, can you tell us a brief description of what led you to create this collection?
EK: I first visited the penitentiary with my students from Mercer County Community College (MCCC) on days the museum was closed to the general public. I would literally have to confine the students to certain areas of the penitentiary for the day, because otherwise they would become overwhelmed with the architectural ruin aspect. The students would be disappointed when all they created were tourist snapshots, and nothing they thought they were capturing of the space. During these photographic opportunities I never picked up a camera, as I had no attraction to the penitentiary, as it was just another building with peeling paint.
A few months later, on a visit to the American Philosophical Society, which is part of Independence Hall, I was visiting the conservation lab. My professor Heide Kyle was the head conservator and we were there for a class field trip. While I was coordinating the photography program at MCCC I was also working on my MFA at The University of the Arts in Book Arts & Printmaking. Heidi was our bookbinding professor and had prepared a slew of books for us to look at. As soon as I walked in the door and looked down, I read a cover that stated Warden’s Logbook Eastern State Penitentiary. As I idly opened the logbook, I became enamored in the voice the Warden’s passages provided. I did not look at any of the other books that Heidi had provided to the class and do not remember listening to a word she said during that visit.
Luckily for me, the books were in such bad shape they could not be viewed by the public. I made an agreement with Heidi to come in and photograph every page of all nine logbooks so that future researchers could have access to the books digitally. I was then also able to use the logbooks for my research. If I had never discovered the Warden’s logbooks, I would have never started the work, as there would have been no narrative for me.
The narrative was provided by reading 4-6 pages of the logbooks and then reflecting on the Warden’s writing each day. I visited the Penitentiary over the course of three years, 362 days to be exact. The Eastern State Penitentiary provided me with full access for those three years, thanks to an agreement with University of the Arts that a book about the work would be published. The book was to be available for sale at the museum’s gift shop. Unfortunately, to date the book has not been published, which is the last piece required to complete this project.
MK: With Thou Art…, Will Give…, and the years of returning to the abandoned Eastern State Penitentiary, you’d mentioned in your artist statement that you would often reflect upon the words of the warden’s writings before beginning to make photographs. Do you feel this was somewhat of a requirement of yourself to allow these words to direct your actions? Why?
EK: Absolutely, because the words are what provided the voice and narrative I was trying to capture during each visit. The words truly prevented me from falling into the trap of just recording the penitentiary as just another ruin. On each day, I would randomly pick a space to confine myself into so that I would not be overwhelmed with the physical characteristics that often happened to my students. I wasn’t trying to feel as if I was in solitaire, but just used this as a tool to make sure I was looking at the space with a concentrated focus for the day. I confined myself into many spaces multiple times and it was amazing how the warden’s words really did change my vision, as well as being focused on one area many times.
When I first told David Graham, a photography professor from the University of the Arts that I was photographing at ESP for my thesis work. He stated “no original photographs can be taken in that place because there are tripod holes everywhere.” David would know, as the University of the Arts photography program would also rent out the penitentiary for their students to photograph. I accepted that as a challenge and knew that I had the Warden’s voice on my side. I will never forget the moment that David walked up to me at my first thesis exhibition and slapped me on the shoulder and said, “Way to make your own tripod holes”, and continued walking away. Everyone else just looked at me as I smiled, knowing exactly what he meant in his compliment.
MK: In looking through the entire collection of Thou Art…, Will Give…, it seems as though you employed the use of a couple of different formats, tones, and film types. Why is this, and was this necessary to illustrate your vision for how the work would look as a whole?
EK: To be honest, the different formats were dependent on my working speed and the ability to capture what I was feeling each day. Towards the end of the project, I was working primarily with the medium format camera because I was leaving the Philadelphia area and moving back to Rochester, NY. I felt a sense of pressure to capture everything I was feeling about the space and had only a few months left to do so.
I first started the project using Polaroid Type 55 because I felt it was required for the architecture, and I knew the only film I had time to develop was the Type 55, due to my intense schedule of teaching and taking classes. Later in the project, I realized that with my use of wide-angle lenses I did not have to use 4x5 and that my sense of the place was captured better in the confines of the square format.
As far as the different tonal values, that again helped me to illustrate the narrative of my reflections on the words I read each day before photographing. The use of painting with light really allowed me to express the narrative through my use of controlled lighting. Along with painting with light, I also employed tonal manipulation techniques in the digital darkroom when I did not capture the environment of the image as intended when painting with light.
MK: Do you feel as though there is one signature image from this collection that gives voice to the work as a whole?
EK: The one image that most viewers tend to resonate with is “The Drapery.” Individuals read the image differently, but the common reoccurrence is the underlying tone of despair and hopelessness. I think it is the mysteriousness and darkness of the image that provides the viewers with the sense of what the prisoners were feeling. This single image is not about the architecture or the words that I overlay within the images. Instead, it is raw emotion and everyone brings their own history and personality into the piece.
Otherwise, I feel the collection of Warden’s logbooks and my images with text and imagery provide the tone to the exhibition. I have had to argue with a few curators to keep the logbooks in the exhibition due to their importance and foundation to the work. The reason is those pieces are not as much about my vision, but rather the voice of the work.
The Drapery, from Thou Art…, Will Give…
Wardens Logbood 1840 (277-282), from Thou Art…, Will Give…
Wardens Corridor, from Thou Art…, Will Give…
MK: Any exceptionally interesting stories from the making of Thou Art…? You were after all working within a location thought to be one of the most haunted places in the world. Any personal thoughts on the haunted aspect and how it might relate to the work?
EK: I was at the penitentiary a few nights when ghost hunters visited the space. My only stories of “ghost” are only humorous. The first was one evening as the series Ghost Hunters was exploring, and placed infrared cameras everywhere. We discussed which cellblocks they planned to setup their cameras. My assistant and I were outside painting with light, as most of my images are with large three million candle watt lights. My assistant and I had just finished one image and packed up the gear, and were walking away, when the crew came running around a corner asking if we were using strobes as they ran by. We yelled back no and they quickly replied, “They had hit the mother load.” At that point I looked at my assistant and we both realized simultaneously that they thought the flashlight movement was strobes or movements of light. The crew later found us and tried scolding us for messing with their serious work. We informed them they weren’t supposed to be setup in that area, and that we were working with flashlights, and that is why I replied no to their question.
The second experience was one winter day when I was the only person in the penitentiary. I decided to walk through the “Terror Behind the Walls” attraction at Eastern State, which is their haunted prison experience for Halloween. I'd never walked through this area before and as I did a skeleton and other objects lunged at me, as the crew had forgotten to turn off the motion sensors for that area. As I was leaving for the day I walked over to the warm office to inform them they were wasting power, as some of the attractions were still active. They all started laughing and asked why my camera was not damaged, as they thought I would have dropped it.
Unfortunately, that is my extent of ghost stories. I really tried to be open to the experience during my night sessions, and a few days when I was the only person in the penitentiary. I would sit in solitaire in the dark for a few hours to truly open myself up to the opportunity, but just never had much luck.
MK: For the series, PRIVATE | Now Back Go : Go Back | PRIVATE, you’ve made the brilliant move to use analog means to illustrate your ideas of what technology and progress can do to a society. Was this your intention from the start of the project, or was it something that came along during its creation? For example, the irony of seeing an image of the abandoned Rochester Kodak plant in this context is clearly not lost.
EK: Personally, I have never stopped shooting film. Yes, there were seven years where my business took over and I did not create a single photograph. However, I love analog because when I capture the image it slows me down, and I always ask my students what that means. They state it means I don’t just keep clicking. My definition of it slowing me down is that I take my time observing when I capture an image and do not photograph as much of the scene, and put more of my emotion into the capturing process. More importantly, the lack of seeing the image on the back of the camera allows me to then reflect back on the scene or image I think I created before I have my film developed. Once my film is developed, I can then see if my interpretation comes through and if not, then I may tweak the digital file which allows me to put more of my emotional connection back into the images. It is for this reason I never stopped shooting film. I shoot digital at times, but I have a different frame of mind when I am capturing images with my digital resources and fall into traps. I am also shooting all of the payphones on digital as a back-up to my film, just in case of the event of a processing mistake.
Yes, the irony of the Kodak plant was filled with heartfelt emotion as I was capturing the piece. Sometimes, I am smiling and laughing as I discover some of the scenes I am photographing, and others I am overcome with a sense of sadness as to where our society is heading towards, in regards to our future. The one constant I have in my long-term projects is film, which allows me to reflect on why I create the photographs.
MK: As this is an ongoing project, is there a long term goal for PRIVATE | Now Back Go : Go Back | PRIVATE?
EK: I do not have a goal for this project, and in fact have not previously tried to exhibit it as a body of work. I have only submitted certain images to juried exhibitions and have had some success with those pieces. It wasn’t until recently that I started thinking that I should start to exhibit the work I have in progress at this time. It always just felt like I am in the beginning stage for this body of work. A few weeks ago, I was asked by Float magazine to submit the work for a feature on their website, and I was taken back by that request. I am starting to think that this body of work will go on throughout my life. The series will contain chapters that will also emulate the stages of my life and experiences. This is the first time I believe a body of work will not have an ending, but rather offer a long-term story that will help me to document history and my life experience. I started this body of work in 2012 and is currently the longest running body of work in progress. I’m truly enjoying the idea of no end goal and seeing where it takes me.
From PRIVATE | Now Back Go : Go Back | PRIVATE
From PRIVATE | Now Back Go : Go Back | PRIVATE
From PRIVATE | Now Back Go : Go Back | PRIVATE
From PRIVATE | Now Back Go : Go Back | PRIVATE
From PRIVATE | Now Back Go : Go Back | PRIVATE
MK: I’ve noticed that with both series Thou Art…, Will Give… and PRIVATE | Now Back Go : Go Back | PRIVATE, the titles have literally come from words within specific images from each. Were these images the inspiration that set you off in the making of these works, or where they simply something that spoke to you when it came to naming each collection?
EK: Those images were simply just something that spoke to me as I was photographing, and knew instantly that they would become the title to the respective body of work. In fact, the PRIVATE | Now Back Go : Go Back | PRIVATE series was originally titled the Upstate Economy and I had to change it because the new title is everything I felt at the time, and continue to feel as I work on this series today.
My image Thou Art… Will Give… was towards the end of the project and I had just read six pages that really discussed the idea of how those prisoners either died in prison or lost their minds. I had been in the Chaplain’s Office many times prior to this visit, but that day as I turned to walk out, I noticed only those four words of a longer prayer passage. It was at that moment that I realized the full meaning behind the project I had been working on for so long with four simple words.
MK: I love how you grasp your local environment with the series, Felicific Calculus. How did this title come about, and how does this work fit into the framework you’ve built with some of your other analog collections? Is it too required to be a film-based project?
EK: Ironically, this series started when I purchased a building for my company in an area of Rochester that many people deem scary, by Rochester’s soccer & baseball stadium. My old studio that I occupied for ten years was in the Neighborhood of the Arts In Rochester, which includes our Art Museum and the Eastman Museum (formerly the George Eastman House), and is populated with cultural landmarks. I was being told by other RIT faculty and a few friends that the area I moved the studio to is a war zone, and they no longer felt safe going to my new studio.
However, my experience was completely opposite, as when I backed up my first truck I had three neighborhood kids that were 7 years old come and help me unload the truck. At first they were just moving stuff, and then they asked if they were going to get paid. I explained I didn’t have any cash and they politely asked, “What do you have?” I looked in the cupboards and found coffee mugs the previous owner left and showed them the mugs. They asked if they could have mugs as payment and I said “Of course, but you need to move all of the rolls of paper to the back of the building.” They completed this task and walked off as if I had just paid them each $100. Meanwhile, in my old studio I had just gone through 3 break-ins in a period of 9 months where the crew that hit me took about $85,000 in equipment.
Therefore, I was very torn with individuals’ gut reaction to the neighborhood I just moved into, and their labeling of the people there. As I became introduced to the neighborhood, I started to understand more about the neighbors that live around my studio and have found the labeling of this area to be completely off-base.
At that time in 2017, I started looking around for any social markers or reason that my friends from the suburbs felt so strongly about the “Big Bad Area” that my studio was now located. I started noticing payphones everywhere in this area, including on street corners of neighborhoods. When I asked my colleagues and friends what they thought of payphones they would state, “Only criminals use them”, or “They are only used by people looking for drugs or selling drugs.”
It was at that point I realized that payphones are one of the social markers, but not the only one, that helps form the definition of these areas. I quickly came to realize that these payphones are still a lifeline to many individuals that reside in some of these areas. I started the project and still have a ways to go in recording all 1,455 payphones that are still left in Monroe County. I plan on displaying the photographs of the payphones along with maps that show the relationship of their location to the census information for race, economics, economic growth or retraction, population, and crime maps.
This title, like many other projects before, took a long time again to develop. I was struggling to think about how Frontier Communications has made the decision to lose money on these payphones while still being in trouble financially themselves and how the payphones serve as a social marker at the same time. It is not often that a corporation thinks about the community before profits. I only discovered this as I was working on the project. The definition of a Felicific Calculus, as according to Webster Dictionary is: a method of determining the rightness of an action by balancing the probable pleasures and pains that it would produce.
Yes, this project requires film more than any of my other projects, because the demise of industry in Rochester, NY is what has led to the current economic conditions of Rochester. The reduction in the blue-collar workforce by Kodak, Xerox, Bausch & Lomb, and others has hit Rochester hard, just as in the rest of the Rust Belt. Therefore, this body of work parallels my other work, which is about sociology and economics, while also bringing the history aspect into the work. In the past two years, I have really started to see the connection between this project and PRIVATE | Now Back Go : Go Back | PRIVATE, which has allowed me to understand my underlying influence to my photographs. I think that understanding has allowed my visualization and concept to move to a new level of maturity in my work.
585.232.9384 - State Street, from Felicific Calculus
585.235.9340 - 490 Motel Mt. Read Blvd, from Felicific Calculus
585.254.9533 - Freebird Cycles, Lyell Avenue, from Felicific Calculus
585.288.9518 - East Main Street, from Felicific Calculus
585.671.9875 - 2245 Empire Blvd, Webster, NY, from Felicific Calculus
MK: What theme or concept is it that you feel is represented most significantly in your photographs?
EK: I only recently realized that a lot of my work is centered on societal awareness that is often due to my reaction to a situation in my life. Essentially, I am documenting my life and how I have witnessed technology and societal influences become the reasons we are falling apart as a society, which is forcing classifications of everything. Each stage of my life has led to a body of work, which has then allowed me to have a greater awareness to the people I associate with and my surroundings. In return, each body of work has shaped me as the person I am today and the person I hope to help my children into becoming. Therefore, I believe this is why a few curators have labeled me as a “reactionary romantic photographer”. I have actually learned to appreciate this label as one curator explained to me that they could clearly see my emotional presence in the images I create. I clearly am not a true conceptual photographer.
MK: While documenting the loss of segments of our society to technology, you have at the same time embraced it yourself. You also operate a business that does digital printmaking and book making. How has your background in the analog world of photography informed this part of the business? Do you feel it was necessary to have the traditional skills before taking on this latest direction?
EK: I wholeheartedly believe that the traditional skills were necessary before utilizing the various digital printing technology offered to my clients and used for creating my work. Analog helped me to create my skill set that I have today and the understanding of the fine print, along with understanding the language of photography. It was so important to me that when I was still in New Jersey working at the community college, I started a Kodak collection to help people understand when they walk into my studio that I am not just a “Pixel Pusher”, but instead a photographer with the traditional training and love for capturing light. Yes, I prefer film, but in the end, we are simply capturing light. To this day my Kodak collection continues to grow and is yet another hobby of mine.
The name of my studio actually comes from Dan Larkin, a fellow professor at RIT, because when I first started teaching at RIT I was 23, and he used to call me Booksmart Boy, and whenever a faculty needed help with digital printing, I became the “go to” person. So naturally, when trying to decide on a studio name he suggested Booksmart Studio. The name really encompasses the digital printing, non-silver printing, workshops, and hand bookbinding we produce in-house. I am able to develop all of my film in-house, as well in our darkroom where I am able to use a barrage of Jobo’s to expedite the process. The experience of the traditional darkroom and continuation of using film has helped to further my requirement to control all aspects of my process. The digital printing aspect I believe is just another tool for me where I have the same controls for visualization that both film and non-silver printing offer.
I truly prefer to think of myself as a photographer using digital printing techniques as a tool, and not a digital printer taking photographs.
MK: I find it quite noteworthy that you also spend some of your time as an educator and lecturer. Is there a part of your teaching that exercises the practice of using analog processes? Do you think that it’s necessary for beginning photographers to have a full grasp of these methods in order to fully grasp the principles of their craft?
EK: Unfortunately, I do not even get to teach photography as an art form, and I believe that is why I do not burn out from creating my own work. Instead, I teach the upper level courses such as Color Management, The Fine Print Workflow, Portfolio Development, & Publication Design. In the Fine Print Workflow class, I do approach the information provided as the Digital Darkroom, meaning that there is a lot of critique of the physical print and the viewer’s emotion towards it, as was offered in a darkroom class. Students often show up expecting the course to be all “pixel pushing” and are very intrigued on the first day when I explain they need to understand how to see a print and allow it to express what they are trying to emulate to the viewer. I have actually had students drop out of the course after hearing the critique aspect to a printing course.
I personally feel that the emulation of your intent was always lesson #1, along with print critique, in the analog world, and has been often lost in the digital world. I find, too often the students rush through the visualization process, whether during the capture stage or the final output. I truly feel that a photographer with an analog foundation ends up being a stronger visualizer of the final intent. In my opinion, too often photographers are rushing to the conceptual aspect of photography without understanding the craft or technical aspect of photography, which could only help their conceptual ideas.
As I stated previously, my visualization is helped by working with analog and being forced to reflect on an image/scene that is not thrown onto the LCD display on the back of my camera. Thus, allowing me to make sure the final image is a reflection of what I visualized prior to the capture. There were times where I failed miserably, but that is where I learned more which prepared me for later image making. Again, I feel that digital has created a scenario where my students are often scared to fail. The students think that the image they have captured is a representation of their emotional attachment which initially leads them to fire the shutter. An analog photographer understands failure is part of the process and that we often need to perfect our visualization. After all, we are only recording the light that we present to either the analog film or digital sensor, and ultimately, we need to visualize and sculpt that light.
MK: One last thing - we’d love to know what more we might expect to see from you in both the near future and in your long-range plans. Anything new we should be on the lookout for?
EK: Currently, my two projects Felicific Calculus and PRIVATE | Now Back Go : Go Back | PRIVATE are ongoing projects. I plan on photographing the PRIVATE | Now Back Go : Go Back | PRIVATE for the foreseeable future, whereas the Felicific Calculus has an end date of Spring 2021, as it will be featured throughout the four floors of exhibition space at CEPA Gallery in Buffalo, NY. During that exhibition, we are planning on the traditional photographic print exhibition along with installations and a few community involved documentary projects in the Buffalo area. My only other interest that is starting to percolate is the idea of shooting portraits of the individuals and families that live within half a mile of my studio and their home environment. Otherwise, my next projects will just be a reaction to some influence in my life.
Update to February 2020:
MK: I feel we should revisit some of this and provide a much needed update to the trajectory of your career and the projects you’ve been working on. Let’s now revisit this last question from July 2019, as clearly these things have shifted some since we last spoke. Care to add an update to these ongoing projects?
EK: I’m glad to know you think things have shifted a bit because I feel like I am still just trying to get my trajectory going in the right direction. I often state “I am just trying to keep the boulder rolling up the hill” as I am just trying to keep any momentum I might have going. My series Thou Art… Will Give… is scheduled for six solo exhibitions in 2020 and Felicific Calculus is scheduled for one solo exhibition in 2020. Thou Art… Will Give… was also published in LensWork #143 and utilized as the cover image. I am currently working on getting Thou Art… Will Give… published into book form and continue my other projects at the same time.
My series Felicific Calculus: Technology as a Social Marker of Race, Class, & Economics in Rochester, NY has just received support from the Warhol Foundation through CEPA Gallery in Buffalo, NY where I will have a multi-floor solo exhibition in April of 2021. I continue to work on this project aggressively as I still have about 900 payphone locations to photograph. Kodak has stepped in to help sponsor part of the work and the series has been published in City Newspaper, Dodho Magazine, and a few other online venues. The support and appreciation for the work from juried exhibitions and publications have helped to serve as motivation to complete the many facets of this project. A few of the various parts of the project include installing payphones in CEPA Gallery that tell the stories of those relying on the payphones, with their voice recordings, in Rochester along with socioeconomic maps. Overall, there are many moving parts that I am trying to work on at the same time.
My series PRIVATE | Now Back Go : Go Back | PRIVATE has become more of a casual project that is ongoing and I work on it when I need to refuel my creative juices and break up the payphone series, which allows me to gain a fresh perspective on the project.
Lastly, a project that I just started getting out into the world is my project Fake News Archive Project: A Historical Archive of the Donald J. Trump Presidency, as it is time to unveil the work. I first unveiled the books Volume 1 & Volume 2 at the Review Santa Fe portfolio review in October and followed that up as part of the book fair at PhotoNOLA, but I have been working on the project since 2016. This work has been my outlet for processing the current political atmosphere in the United States of America and serves as a record of the events that have transpired. I take screenshots every day and often multiple times throughout the day of CNN, ABC News, Fox News, The NY Times, & The Washington Post. The images are meant to serve as an archive of the events that are unfolding on a daily basis and do not reflect my personal political beliefs. Instead, I hope the project will help with media literacy and will open discussions about the events documented. I have witnessed Republicans & Democrats actually talking about the images contained in the books with civility, and that has been a nice contrast to some other discussions I have witnessed in recent years.
MK: It’s this new work, Fake News Archive Project, that I’m quite interested in for this update. What is this new series about and how did its inception begin?
EK: Fake News Archive Project: A Historical Archive of the Donald J. Trump Presidency is my reaction to the current political environment that started on Election Day 2016, if not during the campaigns. I was very concerned about the election in 2016 after an issue occurred at my sons’ school. He was in 1st grade and his elementary school was decided to hold a mock election in response to all of the playground debating about Trump Vs. Clinton. The kids weren’t playing on the playground but rather holding debates about the campaigns. My wife and I asked our son about who he was thinking about voting for and why? We were astonished not by his response to whom he was going to vote for but rather why. He stated he was voting for Trump because Hillary Clinton was going to make China more powerful. We asked him where he had learned that fact and he stated it was on a commercial in the middle of a football game. At that point, we realized that we could not shelter him even at such a young age from the political divisiveness that was occurring. Instead, we had an open discussion with him about both sides and why they were stating the things they were.
The project was born from this experience in trying to discuss recent news and events with a 6-year old. I wanted to start recording the major events that were taking place and I did so by recording the news channel that was being attacked as “fake” the most: CNN. At first, I was hoping the rhetoric of Fake News would die down after the election so I did not record the news every day. However, once the inauguration occurred, I started to capture CNN on a regular basis. Soon after enough I was forced to add the other news organizations that were being labeled such as fake, including ABC News and The New York Times. Eventually, I started to capture the news every day because it was moving so fluidly and added a routine of capturing CNN, ABC News, Fox News, The New York Times, & The Washington Post — in that order. I maintained the same order to make sure that I was not influencing the pairing of news coverage. I wanted to make sure I was recording comparative messages by recording these five news organizations on a daily basis and as they change throughout the day. I had no idea what my final intention was other than an idea to put this information into book form. In the past year and a half, I have been recording the news companies multiple times throughout the day and, at times, almost hourly oftentimes.
In the end, I will have three volumes of books that will be hardcover encased in red, white, and blue with white stars respectively for the volumes. Each book is over 500 pages and I expect that Volume 3 will be over 800 pages. The date ranges for the volumes are as follows.
Volume 1 is from 11/9/16 – 2/20/18 (Election Day – one year after inauguration)
Volume 2 is from 2/20/18 – 4/22/19 (One year after inauguration – 10 days after the Mueller report release)
Volume 3 will be from 4/22/19 – 11/6/2020 (10 days after Mueller report release up until a few days after the next election)
The books are intended to be an archive of the Donald J. Trump presidency which I hope will promote visual & media literacy. I want these books to be accessible to future generations to look back at the events that are unfolding before our very eyes. I have every page available on the www.fakenewsarchiveproject.com site and will provide the PDF to organizations that will share the information with individuals. This project is not about selling the books but rather placing them into archives.
In the past few months, I have come to realize the power of the pages that are contained in the book and want to hold an event titled Fake News UnGlued: (Re)Broadcast News. The event will be held June 14h, 2020 and my goal is to have at least one venue in every state participate.
Volume 1 images:
Volume 2 images:
MK: So in addition to launching a website for Fake News Archive Project and printing a three-volume set of books for the work, there is also an event coming up on June 14th that lets others participate in the project? Tell us a bit about that and how we might get involved.
EK: Yes, on June 14th, 2020 I am trying to plan a nationwide community participatory event that is titled Fake News UnGlued: (Re)Broadcast News which is a community participatory event. June 14th is both Flag Day and President Trump’s birthday and this event is planned to provide communities the ability to (Re)Broadcast the news on these pages within their communities. Social engagement is key and citizens from all political affiliations are invited to participate and hold discussions or just silent (wheat pasting, pin-up, or tape-up) events in a public space. The community individuals will be responsible for (re)broadcasting the news of their choosing through this community engagement event. I have witnessed first-hand how people can openly discuss the events in front of them while holding onto their belief as to which news channel is correct/true.
I am trying to find volunteers that would like to coordinate an event in their area by having them sign-up on the website. This will allow me to start listing all of the organizations, events, & locations to make it is easier for potential participants to locate if an event is happening in their area. I will then provide the PDF files to the person organizing the event and all they have to do is have color copies created of the pages they wish to have participants (re)broadcast. I will also list any additional events they have planned such as lectures, community discussions, panel discussions, children’s activities, and etc… I will ask each participating venue to make sure to post across all social media channels and I will provide a press release they can send to media outlets in their area. We will also have a Blog area of the website where organizers can post stories and imagery from their event.
The true purpose of the event is about posting the news of each day to effectively rebroadcast it in a way that the reverb of the last three years can be felt as people reflect on the events of the day. I think this event offers an important point of contrast to break the intense news cycle in June during the lead-up to the Presidential Election. Taking time to reflect, reframe, and open up some genuine discussions about events of the past three years seems necessary. Too many people are stating, I cannot deal with the news so I am ignoring it. If you ignore the events than how can you make an informed decision on our future as a country? All political beliefs aside, how can you make an informed decision about the future without taking time to look at history that is unedited?
I have a few events planned prior to the June 14th event which will serve as trial events and provide the organizers with a better idea as to how the June 14th event may unfold. On March 4th there will be a Fake News UnGlued: (Re)Broadcast News in cooperation with the photography program at Baylor University in Waco, TX with the event taking place at Cultivate 7Twelve Gallery. Followed very closely with the same event at A Smith Gallery in Johnson City, TX on March 6th, 2020. The A Smith Gallery event will simply be using scotch tape to (re)broadcast the news by taping up the pages onto the gallery walls. Visitors will be allowed to tape pages to the walls for an undetermined amount of days.
The books will also be featured in an exhibition at the Rochester Contemporary Art Gallery from April 3rd-May 10th, 2020. Trust, but verify presents three monumental projects that address our society’s current grappling with notions of truth, veracity and fact. The exhibition’s triad is structured around past, present, and future. Octavio Abundez’s A Fake History of Humanity uses wrong dates, quantities and names to offer the viewer/reader a minimalistic timeline where colonial history, geopolitics, religion, scientific and social progress have been up-ended. Eric Kunsman’s Fake News is the artist’s personal approach to documenting our tumultuous political moment through news headlines and screenshots, while creating an archive of the Presidency of Donald J. Trump. Finally, with ‘Spectre’ and ‘Big Dada’ Bill Posters and Daniel Howe offer a glimpse of an impending but not so distant time where we are controlled and corrupted by ‘deep fake’ technology, artificial intelligence, and the all important currency of personal data.
Trust, but verify takes its name from the rhyming Russian proverb: Doveryáy, no proveryáy. The saying became internationally known in English when it was used by President Ronald Reagan on several occasions in geopolitical negotiations and discussions with the Soviet Union.
MK: The subtext of this project mentions this as a historical archive of the Donald J. Trump Presidency. Do you intend for it to indeed be a part of the historical archive by getting the three book volumes into a venue that will protect, display, and encourage the inspection of this period of time for future generations?
EK: My goal is to have these books placed into archives as universities, colleges, and research libraries. A bonus will be if the books find homes in personal collections or larger collections. To help with this goal of getting the books into institutions we have created the ability to either donate towards the project to help with the UnGlued event or to help raise funds to send the books to libraries. Another option is to purchase the books and have us ship the books to a collection of your choice or to the buyer. I will also provide the PDF free to any archive or organization that will allow others to research the information.
Ultimately, I hope these recordings create both a visual comparison of the events that took take place during the first term of the Donald J. Trump presidency and inform discussions around media literacy. I am finishing this project a day or two after the election NO matter what the results are the 2020 Presidential election. This project has been very taxing on me personally because I cannot hide from the news ever and the capture process has become slightly addictive.
MK: Thank you once again, Eric, for your time and efforts with expanding the knowledge of our cultural landscape with your work. I believe that people will always be able to look back at your images and books with true regard for what is happening in our current society. Cheers to you and your vision.
To learn more about Fake News Archive Project, please visit www.fakenewsarchiveproject.com
To learn more about Booksmart Studio, please visit www.booksmartstudio.com
You can also visit the website of Eric Kunsman here.
*This interview originally posted in its entirety at Analog Forever Magazine, July 21, 2019, here.
All photographs, ©Eric Kunsman.
