Vanessa Marsh
Welcome to another interview culled from the pages of Analog Forever Magazine that I’d done for Edition 5. I love making these previous print-only discussions available to those who had missed out on the opportunity to get a copy. In addition to the lovely images and insightful words of Vanessa Marsh I have here for you now, there is even a small update at the end to tease you with her latest project.
Vanessa Marsh is a photographer who seamlessly blends the boundaries of reality and imagination, creating visually stunning works that evoke a sense of wonder and introspection. Her mastery of light and shadow, combined with her innovative use of traditional photographic techniques, allows her to craft ethereal landscapes and dreamlike scenes that challenge our perceptions of the natural world. Marsh's photographs are not just images; they are windows into ethereal realms, inviting viewers to explore the intricate layers of meaning and emotion embedded within each frame. With a keen eye for the subtle interplay between the tangible and the imagined, Vanessa Marsh has established herself as a unique voice in the world of contemporary photography, captivating audiences with her ability to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.
So, with this experience in our wonderful world of fine art photography, it is clear that her concepts, background, and voice in this realm can be valuable information for others who are setting their goals. Take in these images and absorb her words, for she is a modern master worth learning from.
Bio -
Vanessa Marsh (b.1978, Seattle, Washington) is a Portland, OR based visual artist. Marsh creates imaginary landscapes and atmospheres through a mixed-media process based in photography. She received her M.F.A. from California College of the Arts in San Francisco in 2004. Marsh’s work has been the subject of solo and group exhibitions at venues including Dolby Chadwick Gallery in San Francisco, The SFO Museum, The Penumbra Foundation in New York, photoEye Gallery in Santa Fe, NM, and The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. Marsh has been the recipient of a Penland Winter Residency and Fellowship (2023), a Jentle Foundation Fellowship (2018), a Rayko Photo Center Residency (2014), a MacDowell Colony Fellowship (2007), and a Headlands Center for the Arts MFA Fellowship (2004). Marsh’s images are held in institutional collections, including the San Jose Museum of Art, the San Francisco Art Commission, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art.
Interview -
Michael Kirchoff: 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?
Vanessa Marsh: I grew up in Seattle, WA, and art and culture played an important role in my family. My mom had a decorative painting business and a degree in art history, so our bookshelves were filled with books on art, archeology, architecture, and design. Having an artistic parent meant that there were always lots of art supplies and my brother and I were encouraged to be creative. I dabbled in drawing and painting and especially loved making ceramic dinosaurs. My dad also had an appreciation for the arts and always supported our creative endeavors in addition to exposing us to museums and art galleries, the ballet, and theater.
Later in my childhood, my mom went back to school for graphic design. This was in the ‘80s when a lot of graphic design was still done by hand. I now use many of the same materials in my practice that my mom used back then for graphic design. She would often have projects preparing graphics for printing that involved breaking down images into value components, rendering each value separately on acetate, and then layering the acetate to create the completed image. I can see a direct link to experiencing her working this way and how I work now. I quite literally do the same thing in my work; break down images into values, often using acetate, and then layer the values together to create a new representation.
Looking back, taking photos was a part of our lives in many ways in terms of family vacations and special occasions, as well as a tool in my mom’s business. She had a Nikon E series at the time to document her projects, which I would later be given, and I still sometimes use. Photography started to intrigue me as a creative pursuit at age 13 when I had a friend whose stepmom was an established photographer. She had a darkroom and studio in their family home. The space was officially off limits but one day when my friend’s parents weren’t home, Sarah showed me inside. The space felt like magic to me; a secret creative place tucked away in their small house. I was captivated by the dark shrouded room, the drawers full of organized negatives, sinks and trays and chemistry.
The next year I took my first high school photography class. Almost immediately I couldn’t get enough of developing film and spending hours in the darkroom creating photographs. It was painful for me to be limited to only one class period and I was always negotiating with my teacher to get more time outside of class. My first photography class came right when I was gaining more independence and coming into my own as an individual. With my mom being a painter and designer, photography appealed to me as my own unique creative outlet. I loved taking photos and the feeling of freedom and independence it provided. I felt it gave me agency to wander and explore, to trespass and let go of fear. Though somewhat cliché at this time, my series included lots of photos of vegetables and fish from Pike Place Market, abandoned houses and the ephemera inside, close-ups of roadkill, and the occasional awkward self-portrait.
As I went to college my interest in photography began to be more experimental. I had a great professor, Garth Amundson (a great photographer who still teaches at Western Washington University where I went to undergrad) and he encouraged not only strong core knowledge of photographic technique but experimentation with photograms, film stills, and mixed media in photography. He taught us a lot about historical figures as well as contemporary artists. I found myself drawn to photographers that use tableau or mixed media in their work. I was fascinated by the work of Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons, Thomas Demand, James Casebere and Christian Boltanski. Other artists that interested me were Uta Barth, William Kentridge, and Michal Rovner. Landscape photography spoke to me from Ansel Adams to Robert Adams’ Summer Nights and Catherine Opie’s Freeway Series.
Although photography has always been at the root of my artistic practice, interest in other modes of art-making have greatly influenced my work. My degree from undergrad is in “mixed media” which essentially meant I could take whatever classes I wanted as long as I had a cohesive final project. I focused on photography together with textiles and took classes in printmaking, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, and filmmaking. My final project involved photo transfer, sculpture, and textiles.
In the darkroom, what came easy and what really intrigued me was the different ways of manipulating the process to create unexpected images. Photogram techniques, printing from film stills, pinhole cameras, image transfers and using photography in sculpture and with textiles were all really interesting and I think having the freedom to explore all these different techniques in college had a huge influence on my studio practice today.
I made one short film while in my final year at Western, which I used to apply to graduate school. I was accepted into the film program at California College of the Arts and studied under Jeanne Finley and Lynn Kirby. Both were very generous and encouraged me to follow a path that was leading more into photography than filmmaking. Knowing I didn’t want to be limited to just one medium I chose CCA partly because of the school’s interdisciplinary approach. Jeanne in particular helped me to coalesce my art-making and studio practice and to focus on making a series instead of disparate works. I was also fortunate enough to study under Larry Sultan who motivated me to push the conceptual meaning in my work and challenged me to speak and write clearly about my practice. My final project in graduate school was titled False Horizons. This series of chromogenic prints of film stills where made by first creating scenes using train-scale models of human figures and natural elements. I would then film these scenes in front of real landscapes with a Super 8 camera. Later, I would project the film, select stills and photograph the projection of the film to then create the final chromogenic prints. This project was really the jumping-off point for all my future projects and started the trajectory to what I am working on today.
MK: What is your primary objective in photography?
VM: I think I am driven by a need to create and a desire to communicate my feelings about the natural world around me. I hope my work can speak to the viewer about their relationship to the landscape and evoke an imaginative relationship with their memories, dreams, and imagined futures. In addition to that, I really enjoy learning and developing new ways of making and investigating new processes.
MK: I wanted to direct a portion of this interview at the intentions and process with your latest body of work, The Sun Beneath the Sky. I realize these are lumen prints, but not the kind of lumen prints most are used to seeing. How did this collection come to be, and what is the reasoning behind its creation?
VM: The initial impetus for The Sun Beneath the Sky was to find a way of working that I could do independently in my studio, without relying on an outside darkroom or facility.
My previous body of work, Falling, is a series of chromogenic photograms which require a large format color processor and color darkroom. I developed that series while in residence at Rayko Photo Center in San Francisco. Unfortunately, Rayko closed, and I found myself with no accessible way of continuing the project. As I considered what was next, I knew I wanted to continue using similar language as in previous bodies of work; imagined landscapes, mountains, atmosphere, sky, our place in the cosmos, loneliness or isolation within a landscape, the boundary between the human-made and natural elements. I felt drawn to corresponding materials as well: light, light-sensitive materials, and cut paper.
I’ll admit I was a bit stuck for some time, and one day I decided to get back in my studio and try something new. I signed up for a watercolor class online and went out and bought an obscene amount of watercolor paints. I came back to my studio, and before I had even started on a painting, I remembered something I had noticed at Rayko; that fogged, exposed photo paper would get impressions from the boxes and paper stacked on top if left out on a counter for any time at all. Since I’d worked previously by placing objects (in my case, drawings and paintings) on top of light-sensitive paper, I wondered if there was a way to fix the image on the paper that had been exposed to daylight. I had never worked with lumen printing before, so after some research and realizing that I had all of the necessary components in my studio, I pulled out some of the black paper cut-out mountains I had used in the Falling series and some silver gelatin paper I had laying around and did some experiments. Right away, I was super excited by the process, especially in relation to the subject matter, using the sun to create images that speak directly to sunlight and atmosphere. Needless to say, I haven’t yet gone back to the watercolors!
MK: The color palette for these works looks quite specific (and gorgeous, by the way) in its intentions. Why was this chosen, or was it simply a matter of the materials you use? How do you maintain such consistency with a process that often seems difficult to do so?
VM: I played around quite a bit at the beginning with different kinds of paper from readily available, still-manufactured papers to various types of expired papers. My impression is that lumens are usually made with expired papers that are always going to add a lot of unknown factors, sometimes leading to exciting and unexpected results. That said, after doing many trial runs, I concluded what was important to me was the color palette, accessibility, and consistency. In a process that has many unknowns, I can know one element fairly well. I use Ilford Multigrade Fiber Classic Matte, which has a great range of colors, from yellow to gray/purple, is fairly consistent in how it reacts to UV light and is readily available. I also love the way that the matte surface doesn’t reflect light and instead has an almost glowing quality.
The specific color palette of this paper speaks to me as it relates to natural occurrences in the atmosphere. I can remember taking a small plane out of Denver Airport to Sheridan, WY. As the plane left Denver, the sun was setting and there was mist and clouds rising up from the Rockies that seemed to be right outside my window. The sunlight filtered through the clouds causing the mountains to appear almost translucent and shifting. The colors were very pastel, soft, and translucent. The colors created using this paper in the lumen process remind me of those in-between times of day, dawn and dusk, and the glow of light through clouds, mist, and smoke.
MK: The Sun Beneath the Sky seems to be a body of work that could quite literally go on for many, many years without repeating yourself. Your options in making new prints seem endless. Do you foresee a finale of sorts for this work, or do you indeed intend to continue this as long as possible?
VM: I feel very inspired to keep pushing this series forward. So far, I’ve focused mainly on western mountain ranges and there is more to explore with other geographic forms such as rivers and fault lines. I’m excited to experiment more with the use of sunlight and shadow to create different effects. Larger, mural-sized prints are in the future, but I need to work out some technical difficulties and space restrictions before moving forward with that.
MK: Along the lines of the previous question: how do you know if you’re ever really done with a specific body of work? Do you ever go back to revisit images or collections to improve upon what you felt was previously finished?
VM: I do have some bodies of work I consider complete, although they are from earlier in my career. Once I consider an individual image completed, I don’t usually revisit it. However, I do circle back to various series as they interest me, and depending on available facilities and resources. I would love to add more to my series Falling and I hope to add more to that body of work in the future. Every year I add a few new images to Everywhere All at Once as I am still inspired and interested in making the work and adding to the series.
MK: In regard to your latest works, not to mention previous collections, you seem to have a genuine affinity for the natural world. However, the different part is that rather than photograph nature or its inhabitants you choose to create your own worlds for them to reside in. Why is this?
VM: My skill set settled somewhere between being a photographer and being an illustrator, designer, and craft person. A lot of this is in my background and being exposed to many ways of making in my childhood and in my experience in college. I consider myself an artist that works with photographic materials and light, more than a photographer. I do love taking photographs and take a ton of reference shots and little series of photographs for myself and friends, but I really don’t excel at taking photos of people or landscape. I found my voice in creating these imagined spaces through my alternative processes.
I love being in my studio and being in the darkroom, so I enjoy establishing ways of making that involve both; making something, a drawing, a painting or cut paper, and also photographic and light-based practices. I like to work out compositions over time, making tweaks as I go, switching up layers, adding elements, taking things away. I work with light very much the same way someone works within printmaking or painting. I use it as a material with which to create an image, along with other materials. And the images are all about light in one way or another, be it the light from our sun, the light from the cosmos, or the light reflected in our atmosphere.
Your question also makes me think of another component of my approach to representing the landscape. Since I was young, I’ve done this thing where I look out over a landscape and imagine the past, present, and future; imagine what it might have been like before western expansion while simultaneously seeing where it might be going, the future fires, or housing developments, or even what it might look like after some event that wipes out humankind. I’ve always had a deep sense of empathy with the living landscape, the trees and water and animals in it, but with a deep sense of impending doom about climate change (or the greenhouse effect as it was called in my childhood). I felt I could sense the scaring and destruction caused by humans from a young age. This empathy makes it really hard for me to look deeply at anything climate related, I get nightmares and can feel really overwhelmed. I have great respect for photographers who can look directly at climate issues and capture this moment in history, but honestly, I couldn’t handle emotionally facing these issues in such a first-hand way. My practice is a way to tap into these imagined landscapes and to try to access the idea of beauty existing, regardless of (or in spite of) destruction and doom.
MK: Is the making of prints for The Sun Beneath the Sky an intuitive process, or do you feel that you have a definite idea going in on how an image will play out?
VM: I’d say it’s 50/50. I work on between 3-6 images at once and try to go with the flow of each image, measuring the light and the length of exposure intuitively. There are a great many variables, time of day, time of year, intensity of the light, direct or indirect, and elevation. As I make prints the variables can change and I have to adapt as I go, deciding to make the fourth exposure of a particular print much longer than the first because it’s become overcast. Or I may only quickly expose a print because it’s noon and I have direct sunlight. While I have some experience with these variables, I am often surprised at the outcome. I try not to let myself get too attached to any one print until it is dried and flattened and I can really take a good look at it. Like with a roll of film, I edit out at least 80 percent of the prints I make, so I find it important to not expect too much of any one image until it’s all the way through the process.
MK: What is it that inspires you to decide upon a particular project?
VM: Now that I’ve developed what I consider my own language within my work I am always looking for new ways to employ that language. I am especially intrigued by working out a new photographic process. Initially, I find myself drawn to the aesthetic quality of a photographic medium and I imagine how my language and materials will translate and relate to the visual qualities of the process. I’ll then research, looking through artist and gallery websites as well as photo blogs and discussion boards. As the research progresses, I continue to consider what elements of my visual language are best suited for the process.
Access to time and space is another element that has a big impact on starting or expanding upon a new project. The beginning stages of The Sun Beneath the Sky series was in my studio, I spent a month in residency at the Jentel Artist Residency in Banner, WY where I had a month and a large studio to work on developing the steps in the process, and experimenting with materials. Having that resource to investigate the possibilities of the lumen printing was hugely inspiring in committing long-term to the project.
I also often find inspiration by going through boxes of failed prints, reference materials, and experiments. Sometimes an old failure can lead to a new idea. Even when I am not feeling motivated it’s important for me to spend time in my studio. If I feel like I’m in a rut, dedicating a day to the studio and pushing myself to try something new and just play around without placing too much importance on the end result is vital for me in coming up with new ideas and ways of making.
MK: Visual media often find artists working in a solitary capacity, yet collaboration is often a way to break out of that mold. Do you see yourself as solitary or collaborative when working on your projects?
VM: Although I don’t work collaboratively per se, I think that being a part of an artistic community is really important, and finding ways to participate in different local artist spaces and artist residencies has been really important in my artistic journey. One thing I loved about Rayko Photo Center was the community and collaboration that would naturally happen in the studio there. I found my fellow artists to be great resources in working through technical difficulties, finding new perspectives in my work, and understanding how others were experiencing my work. It was incredibly inspiring to see what other photographers were working on and to see their processes and workflows. Next month, I am starting a six-month alumni residency at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, CA, where I was a fellow back in 2012. Kala is primarily a printmaking studio but has a nice little black-and-white darkroom. I’m looking forward to having access to the darkroom and especially the opportunity to interact with the other artists working there.
MK: Is there anything about your creative process that you feel people miss or are misinformed about?
VM: Each body of work involves a set of steps I’ve developed in the studio. When others describe my process, important steps are often missed. I used to get frustrated when something wasn’t described correctly, however, I’ve decided it’s okay to have a little mystery in how I make my images. Thankfully, The Sun Beneath the Sky is a more straight-forward set of steps than other bodies of work!
I’d say the other thing is that I tend towards making what are often considered beautiful or aesthetically pleasing images. The ways in which the work references environmental destruction, the climate crisis, and fear of apocalypse are subtle and often missed. Some of what I am thinking and feeling when creating the work gets lost to the viewer. I often get the response to The Sun Beneath the Sky works that they are very happy, light images. But meanwhile, I am thinking about the strange beauty of a sunset through wildfire smoke and relating mountains to the idea of the sublime and the way that a sense of the sublime can create a feeling of grandeur that implies unending resources, which in turn leads to destruction and abuse of resources. I think this is my own failing and something to work towards. A goal would be to make work that is simultaneously beautiful, truthful, and disconcerting.
MK: Do you have any other creative pursuits, or has photography become the one obsession that always takes precedence?
VM: Creative obsessions with my photographic projects ebb and flow. When I’m not wrapped up in a project in my studio I tend to get creative in other ways: cooking, sewing, and gardening. I also recently painted a mural in a friend’s backyard. Taking up a lot of creative energy at the moment is a public art project with the Alameda County Arts Commission.
MK: Once you’ve achieved finding your particular style or voice, do you ever feel the need to break out and follow a different path?
VM: More I feel the need to evolve. There are process elements and concepts in my work I feel attached to and move from one series to another. It is important to carry some of my language and voice through to each new series. That said, I try to challenge myself to learn new ways of making, and to develop meaning in the subject matter, and the connection between process and what is represented in the image.
MK: How do you see your work progressing into the future? Do you have anything new you are currently working on that we should be on the lookout for?
VM: I am planning to begin on a new body of photogram-based work at Kala while also expanding on The Sun Beneath the Sky series. The new body of work will use reference shots I took recently in Palm Springs when my father was in the hospital there. I’m starting to envision how I want these images to look and feel, and researching different processes I might employ.
I am also focused on the public art project I mentioned earlier. I’m working on seven sites for designs to be sandblasted into sidewalks, in addition to seven street banners, and seven utility boxes. The banner and utility boxes will involve photography, and the major components of the sandblasted sidewalks are drawing- and design-based. I anticipate the project will be completed in the next year and will be located on Hesperian Boulevard in San Lorenzo, CA.
MK: As an update to this interview and to address some new work of yours, we are including a few images here. Can you tell us about this work and what it was that brought you to create it as an extension of previous collections?
VM: I moved to Oregon a little over two years ago and quickly found that creating lumen prints with sunlight wasn’t going to be as easy year-round as it had been in California. I started to experiment with some new processes that I could work with in my studio during the winter months. I had long wanted to try my hand at cyanotype and began to contemplate how I might use the basics of my practice; silhouettes of landscapes and graduated exposures, to create depth in the cyanotype process. Through trial and error I eventually developed a way of creating positive and negative stencils that allowed me to make multiple exposures while selectively masking some elements of the composition. I also wanted to bring in more references to the Oregon landscape around me. While aspects of California remain, other references are starting to take over, things like blackberry bushes and ferns.
MK: My thanks to you, Vanessa, for your insight and openness with the creative process and your art. I’m eager to see where it continues to take you while moving forward with your projects.
VM: Thank you for your thoughtful questions and the opportunity!
*This interview originally published in Analog Forever Magazine, Edition 5.
You can find more of Vanessa’s work on her website here.
All photographs, ©Vanessa Marsh
