Edward Bateman
There are those in the art world that make work, there are those in the art world that investigate art, and there are those in the art world that step outside the box to pursue something quite different from the ordinary. In my research, discussions, and emails with Edward Bateman, I begin to realize that he does all three of these things. Though, I will also say that he not only steps outside the box, he flips it over, peels back the sides of the box, rearranges them, and then adds an entirely different patina to the outside before presenting it anew. His art and images provide an alternative vision for the past, present, and future, making you unsure of which one you are looking at and which one you are even in. There’s a really deep dive going on here. What’s really transfixing about all of this is that it’s done at such a professional level of artistry that the beauty and intelligence of each image draws you in and makes you a part of its world.
I’m in! I mean, seriously, really in on this work and process (and way of thinking). I’ve looked at all of it and want more. Much more. Keep it comin’, Ed!… And the clincher - there is more because he cannot stop himself. That is more than evident when you review these images ahead and read his words. Trust me, you’ll see. You’ll come away from this with having some of those mental cobwebs wiped away, and you’ll thank him. And the fact that Edward Bateman is more than an artist - he’s an educator as well - gives me such immense hope for the photographic medium into the future. It’s nice to feel that hope, let me tell you.
So now that I’m back to writing these intros as more of a stream of consciousness kind of way, I have to revel in the thought that my interpretations are coming through a bit easier. The days have been cloudy lately, so it is with great admiration that I present this latest interview to clear those skies in an effort to see and think a little deeper.
Phew! Thanks, Ed, I needed that.
Mme Mécanique
Bio -
Edward Bateman is an artist and professor at the University of Utah, where he heads the Photography and Digital Imaging area. Nazraeli Press released Mechanical Brides of the Uncanny (2009), a limited-edition book of his work which is in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, and George Eastman Museum among others. Bateman’s often boundary-stretching work has been widely written about including a 2012 profile in the UK publication Printmaking Today, the authorized journal of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers. He has been included in a half dozen textbooks, including Seizing the Light: A Social and Aesthetic History of Photography (2017) where he contributed images and collaborated on its new chapter on digital photography. Bateman has been twice short-listed (2014 & 2016) for the Lumen Prize, described by The Guardian Culture Blog (U.K.) as “The world’s preeminent digital art prize.” Bateman’s work has been exhibited in over twenty-eight countries and is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The Victoria & Albert Museum, The China Printmaking Museum, and Getty Research Institute, among others. His work was awarded the Nature Prize (2018) at the Earth Photo exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society in London. This December (2020) his work was included in the Art of Staying at Home; Artists in the Time of Corona exhibition at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt.
Interview -
Michael Kirchoff: Thanks for joining me Ed, I’m excited to have this time and conversation with you. I’ll start rather typically. Every photographer experiences that spark that drives them into the direction of image-making. How did you get your start, and what were your early influences?
Edward Bateman: Oh! That’s a journey that makes total sense when looking back but is kind of chaotic when you’re in the middle of it! Now it seems kind of inevitable that I’d end up an artist. When I was a kid, it was a real toss-up whether I’d be an artist or a scientist. (Or maybe an astronaut!)
I grew up surrounded by art – my dad was a psychiatrist who I think really wanted to be an artist. (He was actually quite talented. So that’s where the art gene comes from.) So we were always taken to galleries and museums - other kids would go to Disneyland on family vacations, but not us. I wasn’t given an allowance - but I could get my parents to spring for art supplies. Not toys - but brushes, paints, and paper were OK. I did have LEGOs which I spent a lot of time making everything I could think of. And if I wanted a model, I’d make my own out of paper and color it with magic markers.
The final transition to art came in high school. I was in a chemistry class and (out of hubris - I thought I knew it all) found it much different than I expected. More like math than playing with chemicals. I was also at that time in a vocational graphics class and we worked with lots of graphic arts film and a big process camera. That was my first experience of the magic of seeing an image come up in a tray. And I had started cutting other classes to make posters and things for school events. I didn’t do much photography at this point - it was just too expensive! But I had inherited my dad’s Nikon SP (or rather, claimed it as my own!)
In my first year in college, I got a job working part-time as a graphic designer for the State Office of Education while I studied design…so now I had some money. One of my coworkers had a Nikon FE that he sold me for a pretty good price…and I started to make images for my own assignments and for some of the other students. So…I switched from design to photography. I’d already taken enough classes so it wasn’t a huge transition - even though I only had about a year left in design.
Also at this time - probably 1984 or 85, I took a “computer art” class. It was limited to 5 students and only 3 signed up! But we got to play one day a week with a very exotic proprietary graphics computer called the Ava (Short for Ampex Video Arts). It only had video resolution and I think there were only a half dozen of them in the world - probably because it cost a quarter of a million dollars. You have to remember that Photoshop was still probably a decade away. For me, it was kind of a bridge between art and science. A grad student who had a connection with a dance company invited me to make computer images for a dance concert. And that led to another part-time job working on an early graphics computer - mainly making corporate word slides. The place was in the same building as a great photo studio and pro lab (Borge Anderson and Associates). The boss was a photo old-timer who loved everything about photography. They had a computer/motion-controlled animation stand that you could do some serious (for the time) special effects work with. It pretty much used graphic arts films, so that was another easy transition. So I’d sneak down to that photo world and finally wormed my way into a job there. The place was a photo wonderland – the best equipment and a generous boss who’d let us use it for our own things.
We had a lot of tech around, so when Photoshop finally arrived, we talked the boss into buying it - version 2. It came on 2 floppy disks! So after about a year, he set up a part of the business doing digital work. It was my job to retouch just about anything that came through the door – everything from advertising to restoring old images. That’s where I first got to see, handle and love really old photographs! Back then, there really weren’t many ways to print a digital photograph. We had something called an image recorder - which was originally designed for the motion picture industry. It was the same version that was used in the second Jurassic Park movie.
So while originally I wanted to be Richard Avedon and do fashion (Ha! Which I never did!) I was probably more inspired by Jerry Uelsmann. I wanted to make images that just couldn’t be made in normal ways.
MK: We have some similar aspects to our start in the arts (and probably a whole other discussion!). Have I also not seen before that you had a fascination with aliens when you were younger? I was very much the same, and I wonder how that has manifested itself in the work and/or process you take in making images. It seems quite clear you have an interest in science and technology coupled with history and the future. In fact, we’ll take a look at some specific work next.
EB: Yeah! Flying saucer photographs! It’s kind of funny, but they probably had a bigger influence on my photographic thinking than anything else. Although it would take me years to make that connection.
As a kid, I would check out every library book on UFOs that I could get my hands on. The pictures were always the best part! Of course, they were presented as real evidence; proof of something strange. And I did know they could be fake – I’d show them to people and they would say that it was just a hubcap that someone had thrown into the air. But what if they were true? I’d spend hours just looking at them. Could you tell anything about how they worked or what their intentions were? And if they were faked, could I tell how that was done? It just seemed like I could unravel the mystery by just looking closer. They were such teases! Always giving you just enough to hint at their possibility, but never quite tipping the balance into certainty. And I still think of photographs that way.
As a kid - this is probably about 5th grade - I even tried making flying saucer shots with my little Instamatic. I guess I felt it was the closest I could come to actually seeing one – by making my own. That really must have stuck with me. In college, I did a series of faked UFO shots with handwritten testimony. But they didn’t go over so well. I think I was expected to be making work like Gary Winogrand or Walker Evans or something…
MK: You mention “unravel the mystery”, which looking at much of your work seems quite apropos. Can we take a moment to discuss a body of work or two, now that mystery is on my mind? I am completely enamored with Mechanical Brides of the Uncanny and All the Times We Did Not Know as taking a look at the future from the perspective of the past and finding some middle ground to balance them with the now. Which was developed first, and why explore these themes. Then we’ll look at the second project in another question, as I’m sure these images elicit plenty of questions.
EB: Mechanical Brides might have a slight edge - the two series kind of co-existed and had different roles for me. A lot of my work comes from having a few things converge. Sometimes one of those things is a crazy question I ask myself - maybe a paradox that might contradict one of my expectations for photography. In this case, I had noticed that all photographs are of the past. (Duh!) It seems pretty obvious. So how do you make a photograph of the future? There’s always time travel, but that’s pretty hard to pull off. So I thought about transposing something that is an iconic representation of the future into an image from the past. I had been collecting cartes de visite for my previous project so they were handy.
At first, it was just for fun. Robots are much easier to 3D model than people, so I just wanted to see what it looked like. One of my mentors, when I was in grad school, gave me the best advice that has become a rule for me: “You can never make one of anything; you have to make three. Because you don’t learn enough from one.”
So, I made three more - and started giving them to friends - and a few people started collecting them. And then I just couldn’t stop. It really took me a while to understand a vocabulary of Victorian robots. Most of our robots are from the 1950s - with the exception of the one in the film Metropolis. I looked at steam locomotives and machinery - and sometimes I feel I really didn’t get it until towards the end of the project.
Another thing that we often forget is that photographs have two sides. You really see that in CDVs with the photographer’s advertisements on the back. It turns them into an object rather than just an image.
It is kind of crazy - at first I was kind of embarrassed about this project. I’m supposed to be a serious academic! When people asked me what I was doing, I’d say that I was taking people out of pictures and putting robots in their place. It all sounded way too silly. But that project really treated me well - and led to a book by Nazraeli Press - thanks to my friend and photographer Joe Mills who really believed in me!
It was only later in the project that I began to see these works as a metaphor for the camera: “For the first time in human history, objects of our own creation were looking back at us.” That’s a pretty remarkable description of what the camera does!
All the Times We Did Not Know was never intended as a series - it just kind of grew on its own as a way to try out different ideas. And they’ve never been shown all together. Most of the images were made as editioned prints for school fundraisers. Often I’d start with something that encapsulated my year… like getting a 3D printer. Or an idea like certain forms of art wouldn’t be recognized as art if seen earlier. Or sometimes just an excuse for a pun! Yeah… I have a defective gene for puns.
But one year, that really changed. I was making an image that was something of an homage to my Paris-based printmaker friend Sabine Delahaut. I am a night owl and was working late on an image - so I was probably a little loopy. The original photograph had a woman who I felt looked kind of plain - and her face was quite light and a little soft as though she had moved during the exposure. I’d done a head swap in Photoshop and was turning the layer off and on - pretty close to actual face size - to see if I had the scale and alignment right. And it was like I heard a voice in my head that said, “Please don’t take me away! Don’t erase my identity. I want to be remembered – I want to be part of this picture! Please let me stay.” So I did - I kept her in and made her face work. It felt like one of the smartest things I did that year.
Now I’m not saying that this was some kind of a ghost thing. (I’ll leave that for you to decide - but at times, there really does seem to be something more in some photographs.) Sometimes you’ll hear writers talk this way - I’m thinking of Karen Russel - and they will say that once they heard the character’s voice in their head, the book practically wrote itself. Or George Saunders who has said that if he started acting poorly towards a character, the text can just shut itself down. It’s how I learned about really listening to my work.
I was telling this to a grad student and she (quite rightly) said, “I don’t think my work talks to me like yours does.” So I had to think about that. Any good conversation doesn’t happen right away – you have to spend time getting to know the person. And I think this applies to a work of art too - it takes at least a few hours. It’s like any other relationship – a person won’t share their secrets until you’ve spent some time with them. And that’s when the magic really happens!
So I often try to do that now… it feels like some of these are collaborations between myself and the person in the image. I’ll ask them what they want in their picture. It becomes kind of a mysterious process and an act of trust. But it’s really more fun.
And I did finally figure out how to do that time travel thing – at least in a Jorge Luis Borges way kind of way – via an essay by Joan Fontcuberta which in itself may or may not be fiction.
Automaton No. 12, from Mechanical Brides of the Uncanny
Automaton No. 18 from Mechanical Brides of the Uncanny
MK: Wow, this answer reveals so much. I think I need to ask a couple of follow up questions. The first is - I find it fascinating that some projects were not originally thought of as such, and that they came about more through curiosity and having a bit of fun with photographs. Do you think this is why one body of work might become more successful than another? I mean, don’t artists have to be fully invested in their work for them to have the best result?
EB: Success is kind of a complex idea… but I think I know what you mean. I sometimes say that the muses won’t cough up the goods until they know you’re serious. And that sometimes reveals itself in rather intangible ways.
I often give my students an assignment called “personal photographic challenge”… where they define what that means to them. So there can be some risk in that. And sometimes that risk might mean playing or doing something new – letting the chance of something unfamiliar come into your work. In some ways, I think taking risks in art is another way of caring. If you don’t care, why would you take a risk? I have a handful of “Ed Theories” and one is that creativity is caring enough to take risks.
So somehow, when we really care about something, it is like some of that caring gets transferred to the work and then communicated to others. I really don’t understand what that mechanism might be – but I swear that I see it in my students’ and friends’ work. People can feel it. It might be the lamest definition ever of art, but sometimes I think that art is about caring deeply about what you do. And hopefully, that mindset gets translated to other aspects of our lives like how we treat others.
MK: My other question to your previous answer is - It’s also interesting that we often say, especially when investigating a body of work, that photographs speak to us.
You’ve really raised this again by imagining the words of someone who is part of the content of an image. Photographs are both a language and a conversation aren’t they?
EB: Oh yeah. And we use those conversations as a way to tease apart all of the relationships that go into making or reading an image.
And sometimes it’s not just words but whole other worlds! I’ve been toying lately with a metaphor from multiverses. It’s really an idea based on the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which comes from Hugh Everett - the father of Mark Everett – leader of the band The Eels. It’s the idea that whenever a chance event happens, a new universe splits off to reflect each of the possible outcomes. What if every time you push the shutter button, you create a new universe? You kind of do! Great photographs are like little worlds.
Many of the photographs that really stick with us are like a form of visual synchronicity – everything just lines up in a really connected way. I once asked a mentor for a good, simple definition of the Jungian term synchronicity. He described it as “a meaningful coincidence.” It’s our minds that create the meaningful part.
It’s the strangest thing to me. A photograph can put us face to face – staring into the eyes of someone from the past and there are times when you can really feel that connection. And if it is a particularly poignant image, one involving tragedy or injustice, sometimes we have to answer to the people who are looking back at us.
MK: This concept from Hugh Everett is fascinating. It seems to make sense to me that certainly a different reality based upon a specific decision would be made to compliment the road not taken as much as the one chosen. There’s so much to unpack there! Making photographs and completing bodies of work creates so many options (and potentially universes) for the creator. This makes me wonder about when one might consider themselves done with a specific project. How do you know you’re done with something like this? And do you ever go back to revisit images or collections to improve upon what you felt was previously finished?
EB: I rarely go back and make changes. I sometimes think about something that Brain Eno said about music – he liked that a new “album” is called a release… at some point you just have to let it out into the world to have a life of its own.
Each project seems to have a will of its own – and its own ending. Sometimes it is as simple as a new project just nudges out an old one. With the robots, I knew I wanted to create a set – and because they were cards, it seemed like 21 was the perfect number. Although I did have a few more robots left in me… and I made some of my favorites after the set was complete.
A series has its own vocabulary. And sometimes it just gets exhausted. With the first few images, you’re learning what that vocabulary is – and eventually you just run out of things to say with those words. Usually, a clear sign for me is when the work gets too intellectual. It becomes something like how many obscure metaphors can I balance on the head of a pin. Which means that I have stopped making discoveries…
When you’re younger, you think that time is infinite and that you have an endless number of projects ahead. But one day it hits you that there is only so much work in your future. And that you have to give other things that are bouncing around in your head a chance to have their turn. Although it’s best not to think too much about that… because the flip side is feeling like you have to make work that is “important!” And that is totally paralyzing to me.
Dog Printer, from All the Times We Did Not Know
Sabine + Wolves, from All the Times We Did Not Know
Mary Bateman, from All the Times We Did Not Know
Matilda Talbot + Fox, from All the Times We Did Not Know
MK: I would agree that it becomes abundantly clear as the years go by that prioritizing everything in your life becomes more important. And certainly with projects that one might undertake, especially. Thankfully, with the years comes wisdom and foresight to make better decisions as well. I occasionally find myself looking back to my thought process and where I was with photography at the start. What do you think is the essential thing you wished you knew when you started making photographs?
EB: Over the years, I have wondered what my ten-year-old self would make of the current me. So we’re back to a bit of time travel! But I’ve never thought about the other way around. And I wonder if I would have listened!
There are the easy things: Stop paying attention to fashion photography. Photo history is really interesting… it’s not the repository of old worn out ideas. It will help you to understand the meaning in photos beyond what they are images of. Creativity doesn’t come from equipment. Hang on… the tools that will really let you make the work that is in you are coming soon. Don’t look for trends… by the time you can identify them, it’s too late.
But I kind of feel that I needed to learn everything the hard way. Twice, actually. Sometimes it seems that you can only understand things when the timing is right for you… you can only hear what is important when you are ready. William Kentridge once said something along those lines
I think what I really needed was someone to tell me was to trust the journey… it’s not a race. Look inside yourself for inspiration – not outside. If you make the work that is truly in you – even if it seems kind of strange and quirky – people who believe in you will show up… often when you least expect it. And there really is a place in the world for that kind of work.
Yeah… it’s incredibly scary to trust that journey since it’s your life. And there is no reason at all why anything should work out… it’s really a crazy idea and when you are in the middle of things, it all seems so chaotic. I'm pretty certain that if I had tried to plan things out, I would have made a huge mess of everything. It really is an act of trust – I guess in yourself… which might make it one of the hardest things to do. And not everyone is willing to take that kind of risk… but artists get to do it. I could never have done it alone… I don’t think anyone could. You need a lot of help along the way.
MK: I love what you are saying here about it not being a race - and a very important point that many seem to forget about. I know that early on I felt like I had to always be making work and promoting it as fast as I could. I didn’t want anyone to forget about me but I realized later that those who are paying attention do not forget as easily as one might think. It really is best to allow yourself the time to do what is important at a pace that works for you. The tastemakers will still be there and connect the dots of what you’ve done in the past. I think you also need to be satisfied with your own work or it simply won’t work for others as well. With this, I have to ask - was there a specific point in time where you felt that you had found your voice in photography? Do you ever truly find yourself in a good place with your images, or are you always searching for more?
EB: I don’t think you discover your voice all at once. I imagine like a lot of people, it took going to graduate school for me. Making that commitment. When I began, I wondered if the whole “find your voice” process could happen for me… or if it was even desirable! I guess that is just another one of those “trust the journey” things. I think I had a pretty simplistic idea of what “voice” meant… I thought of it simply as a personal “style” – one that you would be locked into for life! But I think it goes deeper. It really becomes about how you understand art – and specifically your own art; how to read it – and then how to reverse that process to create meaning.
I felt like I had to re-invent or learn everything. So I came up with my own theory of art. Sometimes I call it Ooh, Ahhh and Hmmm which are kind of pre-verbal labels for basic human traits we use to make art: The Sensate, Model-making and Status. I drew on texts from the sciences – anthropology and neuroscience… and read a lot of theory like Arthur Danto’s Transfiguration of the Commonplace. Art and why we make it is something of a puzzle.
Figuring out meaning in photography was a real challenge for me… getting away from simply subject matter or tricks. It started to click when I discovered a linkage between reading art with ideas from Jungian dream interpretation. In some ways, our art is our dreams -– or very much like them. It has to come from somewhere, right? And that place is usually within us. The funny thing is, once you really find your territory, you see the seeds of it in your older work. It’s like it was with you all along and you just had to discover it. It pretty much comes from making a lot of work and asking yourself questions.
There are definitely periods when I feel I am on a roll… and it is so satisfying! I just want to see what will happen next – whether it is within an image or with the next series. I love looking at a finished piece and thinking “Wow! That came out of me?” It’s enough to keep me up late. Too late! Yeah – I’m really something of a night owl. I have a crazy saying… two hours of art-making is worth one hour of sleep! I do sleep better after making work.
Usually, I’m not quite sure what I’m doing when I start. I have a few ideas bouncing around in my head, but I seldom have the big picture yet. With the first few images in a series, I find that I’m kind of repeating myself while I learn the vocabulary. But the discoveries I make in each one leads me to the next image. So along the way, I start imagining what the artist statement might be. I look at what I’m actually making… asking questions and thinking about what the relationships between the elements mean. It really is kind of like dream interpretation. And that usually feeds back into what I am working on… I try to solve the problems I’ve created in my imaginary statement; comparing how they match or differ.
Something I have noticed over the past ten or so years is that every big project seems to have a breaking point… something comes up that threatens to derail everything. But that doesn’t freak me out anymore. I’ve learned that solutions will show up. It’s like a test from the work – seeing if you’re fully in the game. That’s one of the great things about making art for a long time… you don’t have to worry so much because you know how to trust the process. Now if I could only believe that about the other things in my life! I admit it – I am something of a worrier. I joke that that just means that I have a good imagination!
Leaf No. 7c1, from Reversing Photosynthesis
Leaf No. 7c3, from Reversing Photosynthesis
Leaf No. 39c2, from Reversing Photosynthesis
MK: Well, it is quite clear that you have spent some time thinking about this. From what I have learned here, and from others, is that everyone eventually reaches their “voice” destination, but the journey is always a little bit different. I imagine that is expected, but always great to learn about from people like yourself. And speaking of learning, I know that in addition to being an artist you also teach at the University of Utah. Who are you as an educator? Does your own work come into play when you address or inform students about the possibilities of making lens-based imagery in the 21st Century?
EB: Oh! I’m not the one you should be asking that! My students are. No one has ever actually said this to me, but I suspect they might think I am a little goofy! I get excited when I talk about art or photo. I can’t help it – gesturing wildly and bouncing around. I’ve seen videos of me and I might seem a little crazy. But who wants a teacher who seems bored with their subject? And I don’t think you can fake it – students can tell.
What I do often hear from students is that I am very patient. They notice that I stay up too late – they see the times on files and it’s the middle of the night. I’ll sometimes share work in progress and tell them about the challenges that I am facing. I think that students sometimes believe that a fully formed idea just pops into your head and then you make a beeline to the finish … as though you knew exactly what you were doing when you started. Things generally don’t play out that way for me and I suspect that’s true of many artists. I want my students to see that you have to work hard as an artist… so they know that I am always making.
I sometimes have a problem with the word “teach.” It sounds like it’s something I do to you. I can’t open up your head and dump knowledge in. I’ll sometimes say that I can’t “teach” you anything… but I can certainly help you to learn. It’s an interaction – a social process. That makes it a relationship. It involves both of us; and it’s a two-way street. I’ll tell classes that I fully expect to learn something from every one of them. When I was first preparing to teach, I asked a slightly older friend who I respected – a poet – what advice he could give me about teaching. And he gave me a rather cryptic answer: “Just be real honest.” I think about that all the time. How can you have a relationship without that? And you have to leave your ego out of the classroom; it can just get in the way.
I want my students to interact and get to know each other – it makes it easier to speak up during critiques. I play music before my classes. I think a silent classroom is deadly. And I go around before starting and just ask them how they are doing. I’ve heard (second hand) that that really surprises some of them! I try to get to know the students and what they are interested in so I can bring in books or things that might inspire them.
I think about a third or fewer of students do best in a competitive environment – and the rest need a supportive environment to bring out their best work. For many, it’s hard to be really creative when you're stressed… I know the feeling! How can you take risks if you feel the stakes are so high? So there has to be trust that their work will be valued. There is almost never any work that is a total failure… except through not really trying. There are always potentials and possibilities that can be built on.
I think to be effective in the classroom, you have to really care about how you do things. (I’m a worrier… so I always worry that I am not doing enough.) And value the relationships. There really are parallels with art… I think more people need to know that. Thinking like an artist can make people more effective at anything. Caring about what you do and relationships. I don’t know how you could be an artist without paying attention to that.… everything in art is in some way about relationships – not just with people, but with ideas, formal elements, and being honest with the experience.
MK: I’m pretty sure you would have been a favorite educator of mine. Your exuberance for art and photography comes through in this interview, so it comes as no surprise that that is something you bring with you into the classroom (I think I need to see some of those videos). You have some very fortunate students. You make it a conversation and include a sense of belonging and community to that conversation - a collaboration, to be sure. It seems that maybe you are more solitary when it comes to making the work, though. And I wonder if collaborating with others is part of your overall process when it comes to making art and where that might take place?
EB: I usually don’t do collaborative projects. I’m not exactly sure why… maybe it’s because I’m such a night owl! Or because I’m towards the introvert side of the scale. I think the art world – and society as a whole – swings between introvert and extrovert positions. I suspect we are more on the extrovert side right now and that tends to support collaborations.
It is something that I have thought about doing – and there are a half dozen people I’d love to collaborate with. But juggling schedules and finding time is always hard. With the time I do have, I just want to work on what’s already bouncing around in my own head… it’s also why I rarely do commissions.
I think some work really does need to be made by individuals. It might depend on whether you look inward or outward for your inspiration. But I think even that is rarely a solitary experience. We’re all in some kind of community and we get a lot of support and input from our artist friends. It’s often morning in Europe when I am working – so I have a few trusted friends over there who I can share work with… like Paris-based printmaker Sabine Delahaut. She tactfully points out crazy things I've done or things I’ve missed seeing.
I did have one major collaborative project titled DE | MARCATION: A Survey of Contemporary Photography in Utah. It was a museum-grade portfolio with an edition size of 35 featuring the work of 20 artists … and it has been quite successful getting into collections. Amy Jorgensen and I lead the project and we also brought in Marnie Powers-Torrey (and her colleagues) from Red Butte Press at the University of Utah to do the letterpress printing and build the boxes. It was such a huge project – and it nearly killed us all off. Three years in the making and definitely a few all-nighters. It never would have been completed without Amy’s tireless work to keep things on track. And it certainly would never have seen the light of day if it was me alone. When Amy bounced the idea off of me, I knew it was too important not to be a part of.
Spectral Device No. 4, from Science Rends the Veil
Spectral Device No. 9, from Science Rends the Veil
Spectral Device No. 13, from Science Rends the Veil
MK: I completely understand making work in a solitary way, as that’s my normal process as well. I save the collaborations for ventures like this very interview project. So I think it’s time to also talk about your latest, Covid-shutdown-induced body of work, Yosemite: Seeking Sublime, not to mention it’s embrace by photo-eye Gallery in Santa Fe. How about some clarity on how this came about and where it’s going?
EB: It was kind of a crazy journey where many things converged. But I remember the actual moment when it all started. I had been reading Tyler Green’s book Carleton Watkins: Making the West American (and listening to him talk so enthusiastically about Watkins on his Modern Art Notes podcast), so Yosemite was on my mind. And then I got an email from my friend Binh Danh with a link to a video on him from The National Gallery of Art. I guess it had taken them about 3 years to finish it and he was really excited. So hearing him talk about his work and seeing his daguerreotypes of Yosemite made me think: Gee! Everyone has photographed Yosemite but me! And if you look at the list of people who have shot there, it’s really true! People you wouldn’t even expect! So I simply looked to my left and there was my 3D printer.
I knew then that I could 3D print my own Yosemite to photograph… and that sounded like the crazy kind of thing that I would do! I had to actually get a sense of the place in a rather abstract way through maps and satellite views. In spare moments, I tracked down the geographical information to make the digital models. I started 3D printing them, but wasn’t quite sure what to do next. The place was still very abstract to me and I thought of shooting then as abstracts. I’d printed them at a slightly lower resolution, so they had layer lines like topographic maps. As an experiment, I doused one with india ink and that really made the lines stand out. I got some cans of spray fog and shot a lot of tests – sometimes with just my phone – and I was surprised that they had a kind of reality that I hadn’t expected. In December of 2019, I bought myself a fog machine, but I didn’t open it up until May when teaching was finished and we were deep into the pandemic. The fog would build up and turn the summer sunlight amber, like real atmosphere or the smoke from the California fires. I sandblasted one of the models which made it seem even more like stone. So it turned into the perfect project for being at home in lock-down times.
Oh! You were there when this project first came to the attention of photo-eye Gallery! Anne Kelly, the gallery director, had organized a small Zoom social after PhotoLA last July, 2020. We were going around sharing what we were working on at these strange times, and I said that I had been photographing Yosemite. Ha! I think that got people’s attention… especially since so much travel had been shut down. Getting that reaction really helped… so I started shooting a lot more which turned out to be a good thing. I got a hint that this might happen a few months later when I got a late Saturday night email from photo-eye owner Rixon Reed asking about the project… and then three days later, Anne proposed the show with a very quick timeline. But how could I resist? Everyone at photo-eye was so amazing and really helped me! And so cool that they thought about including one of the 3D models with the sale of the prints. They have continued to be so supportive… we’ve added some new images to the project just this week.
https://yosemite.photoeye.com/
How do you not link mountains to the idea of the sublime? But with this project, it seemed so odd… could little bits of plastic evoke something of that overwhelming feeling? It seemed like a great question that I really had to puzzle over. Where does the sublime come from? Obviously, it is an interior experience… but did 19th-century image-makers ever question whether the sublime could be captured in photos or paint? I suspect that images trigger our own memories of nature, so we bring the sublime into our viewing – even with my little plastic models.
The images I made felt somewhat like dreams to me. Which makes sense – they are certainly as much from my imagination as a real place on earth. And I found that to be calming. In a time that has been so chaotic, it is nice to know that there are still a few things under my control that can give me joy, hope, and wonder. There was a lot that crossed my mind on this project… sometimes with a darker edge. One of the first things I noticed was that the classic photographers relied on trees for their compositions… something that I didn’t have. Which made me think (again) of the forest fires in California and global warming. So maybe these are post-apocalyptic views of Yosemite. Or maybe very primal views before life. But somehow, they still had a grandeur… which I suspect came from both our familiarity with Yosemite and from the chaos of the clouds. The fog machine clouds have a life of their own and move and change so fast! Sometimes they would create a total white-out. And at other times, surreal swirls following the subtle air currents flowing around my miniature mountains. They are chaotic in a way that only nature can be – but still having a sublime beauty that is always waiting for us in nature. Chaos and beauty intertwined; a good reminder for these times.
Half Dome No. 1, from Yosemite: Seeking Sublime
El Capitan Storm Tryptich, from Yosemite: Seeking Sublime
Cathedral Rock No. 2, from Yosemite: Seeking Sublime
Yosemite Eclipse - Half Dome No. 1, from Yosemite: Seeking Sublime
MK: I love stories like this! All the pieces of the puzzle fell together nicely. And what a wonderful pandemic project - so different from what I’ve seen others working on during this crazy time. Being productive these days can be tough. I appreciate all the time and effort you’ve put in here as well - and as a way of wrapping up this interview, can I ask if you might have anything else new coming up? I know you always have something brewing behind the curtain.
EB: I still have a few Yosemite’s in me. On New Year’s Eve this year, I was photographing the fireworks over Yosemite as the clock struck midnight. Sometimes just doing something for fun leads to other ideas. Such as photographing a rare total eclipse over Yosemite – a once in a lifetime experience! For the sun, I used a fiber optic light source (often used for science and microscopy). A bit of fill-flash to freeze the rapidly moving clouds. The next day, I thought that I should have photographed Half Dome… Ha! So it became a twice in a lifetime experience. And then there are the abstracts and other quirky thoughts I’ve had for Yosemite… like gelato glaciers.
Yosemite Eclipse - Half Dome No. 1, from Yosemite: Seeking Sublime
I’m rarely sure what is coming next… I’m often in what I call “squeaky wheel” mode where whatever is making the most noise gets the attention. I have several uncompleted series that seem interesting again. I’ve even done a bit of work on them the past month. One involving fictional archaeology from the time a few years back when they were digging deep trenches by the art department at my school. It seemed like a great opportunity to put “discoveries” in them.
Untitled 3B
Another is a partial series that involves the intersection of 3D printing and early photo history – including some as a matrix for cyanotypes. Just before the Yosemite work, I had started extracting objects from noted 19th-century photographs and turning them into 3D printed objects. One has become kind of a quiz for photo geeks… what is it? I have had answers from everything to a man kicking a rabbit to the Fleetwood Mac Rumours album cover. Maybe I shouldn’t say what it is… or we can put the answer at the bottom!
I’m a few images into a kind of a reverse appropriation project. I’ve been “discovering” 19th-century images that were the inspiration for 20th-century works. It is kind of a take on a Borges quote that artists create not just their descendants but also their predecessors. Back to time travel, I guess.
And because I am crazy, I have been experimenting with a different way of making daguerreotypes using chemicals – disinfectants – that might typically have been found in a 1960s medicine cabinet. Yeah… I’m trying to reinvent a wheel that no one needs! But it’s probably safer. I’ve actually been able to get some bits of images… not great… but enough to make me think it might be possible. It definitely puts me back into the 19th century. Even getting a ghost of an image feels like a miracle! Just polishing a plate brings up challenges that I never would have expected. Dumb things like using toothpaste… it did a nice job, but I think the fluoride bonded with the silver. Maybe all of this comes from teaching photo history and also from my Science Rends the Veil project where I imagined inventors and their strange devices to make ghosts visible. I keep pondering odd ways to make images.
And I’ve also been working with Robert Hirsch on writing a new fourth edition of his photo-textbook Light and Lens. And a handful of shows. I often say that an artist’s work is never done. So I’m expecting there’s something I haven’t even thought of yet.
Whew! I really appreciate getting to have a conversation with you, Michael! You’ve been so generous with your time. Yeah… I can rattle on, so thank you. I’m pretty sure that our paths are going to cross in person one of these days!
Oh! And that strange 3D printed object? It’s actually the first human photographed by Daguerre – the man getting his boots polished.
You can find more of Edward's work on his website here.
All photographs, ©Edward Batemen
First Human
Muybridge Horse
