My 2009 solo show, Flight Patterns, is current up at Irvine Contemporary in Washington D.C.  The opening was Oct 30th and well attended by friends and art lovers enticed by the Washington Post calling Flight Patterns the opening of the week.  The following description is by Irvine Contemporary:

Phil Nesmith: Flight Patterns
New Photograms

Phil Nesmith’s Flight Patterns is a series of new dryplate photograms created with silver nitrate emulsion on black glass plates. This is Phil Nesmith’s second solo exhibition with Irvine Contemporary

Phil Nesmith’s photograms are innovative images created directly on photosensitive black glass plates without a camera or lens. By re-appropriating one of the earliest photo-graphic processes, Nesmith continues his ongoing exploration of the effects of light and shadows and the memory images created by a brief moment of exposure on sliver nitrate emulsion.

Nesmith’s new series of images evoke allegories of flight, fragility, evanescence, materiality, and time. Because photograms require the presence of an actual object to cast shadows or allow light to penetrate through a translucent material, the resulting image records a moment in time when something interrupted light and space on the photosensitive medium, but without a camera lens.

Nesmith’s haunting compositions present fictional of worlds of flying creatures fixed in a moment we feel as both present and lost, timeless and absent, a memory of an imaginary moment created entirely by the play of light on material forms. Photograms of creatures of flight and short life-spans become fitting allegories of transience, life and time as a series of fleeting moments.

Phil Nesmith is engaging in a fascinating and important dialog with artists and photo-graphers who use hybrid and lensless photo images for conceptual ends, a project that extends back to Man Ray and earliest photography. In the past decade, Chuck Close, Adam Fuss, and Sally Mann have re-appropriated early photographic methods for their images, and Wolfgang Tillmans has created several series of abstract, cameraless images made with controlled, direct exposures on photo paper. Phil Nesmith’s photograms play with our expectations about photographic images and our desire to fix and objectify a moment in time, the sense of real things leaving a trace in the realm of imaginary fictions.

©2009 Laura Kicey

The show is up until December 12th so there is plenty of time to make plans to see this great body of work.  On November 12th I will be giving a gallery talk and demo about some of the processes I use and about the Flight Patterns work.  If you could not make it to the opening, the talk during FotoWeek DC 2009 at Irvine Contemporary would be a great time to see the work and ask me questions.

I am honored to announce that for the second year in a row I have been invited to participate in the Annual Transformer Silent Auction and Benefit Party.  Because of prior arrangements to teach a class I am not able to personally attend the event as I did last year.

This event is a great opportunity to obtain great art at great prices!  If you are in the Washington D.C. area and interested in attended the information you need is below.  Please note that tickets completely sale out fast so do not delay.

This year MH-47 from the My Baghdad series will be available for bidding.  The image is an 8×12″ dry-plate (gelatin silver emulsion) positive on black glass finished with sandarac varnish.

Finally, something that is helping me identify a few things that I have felt a bit uncomfortable about in regards to the education/work world as it is today.  Although I could name a few things I did not like about my IT career, I still had a hard time fully understanding why I was not very fulfilled when my bank account was.  I have not completed reading the book yet, but I can identify with much of what I have read and how the ideas presented relate to my life choices over the past five or six years.  More importantly there are a few deep connections with why I make my art and what draws me to the processes I enjoy.  Knowledge is power, never stop reading.

To find out more about this book visit NPR.

Today I finally began the last step in the long line of steps that leads to the day I release my work into the hands of others.  My last intimate days with my creations, the physical manifestations of chemical reactions in my brain,  and darkroom.  My work is deeply rooted in the physical, mental, and emotional journey I experience in the quest to make it.  My work is most complete when I am so tired from the effort of bring it to life, raising it from nothing into something.  Often in the dark for hours, surrounded by only my thoughts and fears and the hazards of the tools I choose to use I often wonder what I will feel when the journey is finally over.

That time draws just a bit closer with the beginning of the end, the application of the protective varnish on the plates.  Today I varnished the first few plates of the Flight Patterns series.  After weeks of agonizing over which course to take with this last step the decision was finally made.  Because of a limited amount of time before the October 30th opening, and the amount of work left to compete I chose to return to the embracing aroma of lavender and sandarac.

Vintage formula varnish used since the earliest days of collodion plate photography fits the bill nicely for the current  task at hand because it sets and dries fast.  Although my last few projects have use commercial varnishes, the look of which I really enjoy, the massive size of many of the Flight Pattern works requires something that is not as vulnerable to debris, such as dust, during application and drying.  The vintage varnish, unlike the commercial product I had explored at the beginning if the year is set with heat and dries fast minimizing the exposure to airborne contamination which was a problem with the work created for the Aspect: Ratio 2 show in January.

Captain William De Wiveleslie  Abney describes the process of varnish application in his book Photography With Emulsions printed in 1885 like this:

To apply the varnish, the plate should be gently warmed over a spirit-lamp or before the fire to such a heat that the back of the hand can only just bear the touch of the plate.  The varnish is applied like the collodion.  After draining off all excess, and rocking the plate, it is warmed till all spirit has evaporated, and till the film is glossy.  A lack of warmth will cause the film to dry “dead.”

The image above was taken as I collected the needed material to create the varnish to be used to finish the plates.  As with most other elements of my work, many manual steps are involved, here the weighing and grinding of the gum sandarac being my favorite.  The sandarac is dissolved in 190 proof alcohol and lavender oil is added.  Simple, effective, and extremely resilient, but it is the smell that is most pleasing.

The time is near.  Make your plans now.  What started in January with Aspect: Ratio 2 ends October 30th with the showing of the rest of the work inspired by shadow and silhouette.  I hope you will join us.

Find details at the Irvine Contemporary site and on Facebook.

Short post today.  If you are in the market for a finally crafted camera for plate work I would like to direct your attention to the work of Black Art Woodcraft in Rochester NY.  I have made post about Steve’s product offerings before.  Although I have not had the pleasure of owning any of his products (YET), I have heard from many who do and love them.   I feel that the images on his site reveal something about the level of quality of his works.  There is so much interest in the Black Art cameras that there is current a 6 month waiting list.  So, if you’re looking for a camera, contact Steve and let him know that I recommended him to you.  The waiting list is only going to get longer!

©2009 Phillip Nesmith - 19x18" dry plate ambrotype

Over the past eight months I have been working on a collection of dry plate images to be shown in my second solo show at Irvine Contemporary in Washington D.C.  These months have been torturous for many reasons in addition to my often scattered and stressful method of creating.  My work is often is the collective result of the process of creation, one piece informing the next, one unforeseen result informing the next, one bad idea leading to the next good one.  This happens on and on until the body of work has made itself and in the end tells ME when it is done, not the other way around.  Very little is mapped out prior to commencing work.

For this body of work I wanted to explore many things, most of which I am not yet ready to write about, at least not until I have had a chance to think about my official statement for the show.  The one thing that I will say is that I wanted to create all of the images without the use of camera.  Direct positive photograms on black glass of various sizes and orientations, which in the end became be as large as 48” diptychs and 24” single plate images. The largest plates I have ever made.

Since the 1830s photograms have been used to record scientific specimens such as the work of Anna Atkins as well as artisticideas by the likes of Man Ray and more recently Adam Fuss.  I wanted to focus on the lost wonder of the natural world that we once had, but produce images that were each an individual story yet connected to each other and related to something of the current world condition.  Historically the photogram has been not used for a narrative purpose and this is one of the areas I have been exploring during this process.  Photograms are often easy to look at because of their simplistic graphic qualities that some call decorative.  This trait camouflages many of the ideas each of my plates contain.  I really enjoy this about the choice to make photograms for this project, it is almost a test or sorts.  Technically I am just capturing the shadows of objects that are in contact with the plate, which is symbolically important to what I am trying to do, but also presents a great creative challenge, one that at times has been very exciting and at others very frustrating and limiting.

I think that the work is coming to an end, although there are a few more plates that may find their way into reality.  With the final few plates comes the next stage of the process, which will be to get everything scanned for my archives, then to finishing with varnish and framing.  I am not looking forward to the varnish process as it is possible to lose work that cannot be replaced.  This is something that happened while getting things ready for the Aspect: Ratio 2 show back in January.  Needless to say I am really nervous about moving into the finishing stage, but I am feeling the need to wrap things up.  New projects await!

This new work will be on view at Irvine Contemporary in Washington D.C. starting October 31, 2009.  For details please contact the gallery at the link above.

In the world of photography history the tintype has always been one of the red-headed stepchildren of photographic processes.  Until recently most photography history books only briefly mention the existence of the tintype and what attention is given is mainly awarded because of the American Civil War and the popularity of the tintype with the soldiers of that time.  Of course with the reemerging popularity of tintype photography in part fueled by the explosion of digital image making and the loss of handmade pictures the availability of technical information about tintyping is on the rise, but the historical aspects can still be hard to find.

I like to read and recently I have been reading two books specifically about the tintype.  Although I have not been making tintypes lately in favor of glass images, I still have a great interest in them and learning about the social aspects of the American tintype as well as the technical is very important as they influence how I use the process in my contemporary work.  Much of the technical decisions about my work are about playing with the time line of photographic history and at times only loosely tied to the subject of the image.  Each image has meaning at all levels, from technical to aesthetic.  The idea of the time line reminds me of John Szarkowski words in his book Looking at Photographs (New York:  Museum of Modern Art, 1973):

“Many of the most innovative workers of the past generation have found inspiration and precedent by leap-frogging backwards, beyond the time of their immediate predecessors, to a more distant photographic past.  As a rule, photography has not developed in a disciplined and linear manner, but has rather grown like an untended garden, making full use of the principles of random selection, laissez-faire, participatory democracy, and ignorance.”

The tintype did not have a Mathew Brady, Henri Cartier-Bresson, or Ansel Adams in its history to ensure in-depth coverage in the modern popular photography history time line.  Tintypist at the time  were seen as the cheapest and less skilled of all photographrs who cared nothing about “art” and only wanted to provide for their customers what they wanted which was a fast and cheap likeness.  Tintypes were made of everyday people, the workers of the country.  Unlike the high class studios capturing the elite of American society, traveling tintypist were cataloging the everyday American at a time when the country was about the change forever which is pretty fascinating to think about.

Two books can shed light on the history of the tintype and its true impact on the photographic record of America and they are Working Stiffs by Michael Carlebach and The American Tintype by Floyd Rinhart, Marion Rinhart and Robert Wagner.  Although small in size each book fills some holes in the common history of the tintype.  An example of this would be the fact that dry plate (gelatin emulsion based) tintypes were in fact produced and in use by many photographers, some of which used semi-automatic cameras.  In online forums is has been said that a dry plate tintype is “modern” and not a true tintype (like those made with wet collodion), but the historic record proves this false.  Earlier on this blog I made a post about this topic and stated that I did not know for a fact that dry plate tintypes were made, but that the technology was in existence.  I was very happy to find this information as it has been the topic of many conversations and debates (most of which I tried to avoid).  If you did not know, photographers can be pretty picky about their process…

If you have any interest in tintyping beyond the actual technical steps, I recommend the above mentioned books for your personal library.  They are filled with great examples of tintypes, diagrams, advertisements and just maybe that small nugget of information you have been looking for that happens to be missing from the larger, general purpose photography history books.  Check ‘em out!

When I was a kid, just as today, I had a vast array of interest.  One of them was thinking about what I was going to be when I grew up.  The dry plate ambrotype triptych above shows three professions that seemed to enter my thoughts often, and as anyone who knows me would point out the Soldier won me over for a number of years.  My father would be quick to point out that another favorite of mine ,which is not depicted, was garbage collector.  Yeah I know, I know…but man I really thought that crusher and being able to ride on the back of the truck was so cool.  Also not shown is IT professional, which is the label I took off last year, and artist.  Even if I would have been a lumberjack, a candy maker, and even the garbage man before being a soldier and then IT professional the artist would always be there.

The plates above are not easy to read, they are crowded and not well defined.  Even with detailed inspection it my be impossible to work out what is going on.  In a way, although completely by mistake, they exactly sum up my current existence because of those attributes.  Even in times of uncertainty the act of creating can remind us of the value of creativity and imagination as tool to help us navigate through life.

You may see only junk in the image above, and if you must know the truth they are rejects from a test conducted two night ago in my darkroom.  Rejects…with the power to grab my attention and show me something I missed because I had become too entangled in fear and uncertainty.  No matter what, I am an artist, a creator of things and there is a steadying power in knowing that no employer (or lack of one) can take that away.

For those of you keeping up with my experiments on Flickr this will be old news to you.  A week ago I finished this is 10 pull screen print image on paper based on one of my dry plate images which can be seen here. Three stencils were involved in this work which were computer generated and hand modified after printing.  The original single stencil two pull test concept on plain paper can be seen here.

I have always been interested in the transformation of things.  Often in my work I am moving from one method to another resulting in a combination of both process and time.  Recently I have also been combining 35mm art education slides recovered from the trash to create new images from someone elses captured momments and art.  In my current screen printing experiments I am playing with the idea of using my photographic plates as a starting point for a unique dirivitive print which clearly poseses the spirit of the original work but has become something new and clearly not photographic.

…is another mans treasure.

There is something wonderful about sitting in the dark and projecting 35mm slides (recovered from someones trash) onto the wall. Maybe it is because it just is not done much any more. The hum of the cooling fan mixed with the mechanical “kerchunk” as the carousel advances, dropping the next image in front of the brilliant white light. The dust floating on the air in front of the bean of light cutting the dark. The reflected light of the image dimly illuminating the room.

This image is like others I have been posting to Flickr. It is a digital photograph of multiple slides projected over each other. Yes, I could use my digital film scanner to accomplish the same thing with much greater quality, but then I would be missing the entire sensory experience of the projection.

Most of the recovered slides that I have been playing with are Kodak Kodachrome which Kodak announced this week would be killed off and added to the growing listed of discontinued film based photographic products.  I cant help but think about the fact that industrial  production is such a major force in the photographic arts.  Painters, sketch artist, sculptors, glass blowers……are the works they are able to produce as closely tied to the offerings of manufactures as photographers?

The fact that I was given the opportunity to explore a few large boxes of discarded art educational slides the same month that Kodak announces the kill off of Kodachrome means something.  What exactly that meaning might be I am not sure other than change always comes and sometimes it is a sad thing.

One thing that is great about working in old photographic processes (or at least one thing that I like) is that you cant find out everything just by searching Google . It takes some effort and investigation to track down the information needed.  Sure there are many places offing basic information to get a person going quickly making images. There is  also help with troubleshooting for the most common bumps that come about.  The deeper and more involved you get the more you find that not all the answers are on that forum you might have joined.  Well, you will be happy to know that there are still some vintage photography books floating about in that weird used bookstore that you have seen but never gone into that just might have the answers you seek.

Lucky for me I love old books so when I do happen to find one on photography it is a double win.  Of course many that I find do not have anything of value for what I do because of the time it was published the the photographic processes popular at that time.  But from time to time I do fine something that is interesting if just from a reference standpoint like the books shown above.  The dark one is from 1927 and was found in Vermont last summer and is the first edition of Photography : Its Principles and Practice by C. B. Neblette.  Neblette was the Director of the photography division of Pennsylvania State College.  The red book is a new accusision made this week for $6.00.  It is The Science & Practice of Photography by John R. Roebuck published in 1920.  Roebuck was an assistant professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin.

The Neblette book was purchased because of all of the great images and diagrams of apparatus no longer commercially available for photographic work.  Many vintage text will reference an item such as a plate drying box (see above) but will give no description of its physical form as it was commonplace at the time of publication and clarification was not needed.  To build one today you are left to your own devices to create the design.  So to find a book loaded with diagrams to enrich the text was exciting and worth the price to have in my library.

The book by Roebuck is very interesting because it is an actually college level course book with a lab section in the back.  The Part II which is the lab section contains instructions to the students on evaluation requirements, required supplies, and darkroom setup for the included 24 “Experiments” which range from basic chemical mixing, to lantern slide creation and carbon printing.  I was very interested in the extensive gelatin dry plate sections (see above) and the fact that one of the experiments in the lab section was the making of wet collodion plates.  Because of the discovery of this book I am now interested in investigating at what time did the teaching of wet plate image making fall out of favor in the college environment.

So the point is this, great knowledge is still availible out there for the rapidly dissapearing historical photographic processes.  Even so there is no dount that it is indeed gettng harder to find as these great old books dissappear.  Be on the look out!  You never know where you might find that $6 treaure trove of historic information…..but I am pretty positive it will  not be on your Kindle.

I am sorry if you might have been a bit excited by the title of this post.  If you did that means that you were one of the people who really enjoyed seeing my Arizona Graves tintypes at Artomatic 2007.  Well…I am sorry to say that because of current obligations I am not available for Artomatic again, but I did make an appearance yesterday.  You see I was a “hired gun” of sorts.  I was supporting my wife in her efforts to pull together a display for some of her large format work in a compressed amount of time.  Although in the image above I don’t look too happy, I was goofing for the camera as always…..we had a fun time.

The concept for the display is informed by the subject of the images which are abandoned and raised shopping centers and strip malls found in the Richmond VA. area.  The unfinished plywood of the wall worked nice in bringing the visual texture of boarded windows into the display space.  It was fun not having to be spot-on with the set up, with the pencil reference lines etc left in place.  Although not the original idea, the natural space we found worked well and allowed us to avoid multiple trips to D.C. from Richmond.

If your going to be in Washington D.C. during the next few weeks you might just want to check out the good, bad, and the ugly that makes Artomatic what is it.

Over the past four days I have spent most of my waking hours in the darkroom.  Compelled by a sudden burst of visions and ideas I confined myself to the darkness of my small lab.  That is the way it is for me, the sudden burst of creative activity I mean.  I have friends that seem to be able to create at will, whenever they happen to have a moment of free time.  They just sit down and get on with making art.  For me it is a bit more painful because I will want to create but the ideas, focus, or energy just are not there.  Then there are other times like this weekend when there is not enough time in the day or supplies in the lockers to bring everything into the world.

Above is a large dry plate image that was made on May 15, 2009.  It is the largest dry plate image that I have ever attempted at 18×13” (height x width).  No matter how much experience one has with pouring plates (dry plate or wet collodion) the larger the plate the more sweat that naturally forms on your brow.

Technicalities aside, it is the weight of a large plate that I find most attractive.  Although plate photography in all its forms I find very attractive visually, it is the involvement of the hands that draws me most I think.  The act of creating something with the hands seems so powerful.  Add in some tears and blood caused by mystery chemical problems, cuts from sharp glass, and lost “perfect” images due to fate and you have the ultimate combination of elements to draw me like a moth to an open flame.

The image above is part of an ongoing project exploring a wide range of thoughts which are centered on the natural world and our interaction and impact with/on it.  Study of cabinets of curiosities has played a large part in the direction of the images so far.  As time moves on and the collection grows the images are changing adding an interesting visual record of the transformation of my ideas.  Most of these images get posted to my Flickr account and often broadcast on Facebook.  Many photographers and artist only release completed work for the world to see, hiding their screw-ups and transitions in direction in the closets of their studios.  The reasons for this are numerous from the idea they should present the image of the master who never makes a mistake, or are insecure in showing work that it not guaranteed to be received as great.  There is something to be said for showing a tightly edited body of work and I fully support this approach, but I feel that being open (to a point) is important too.  I do not show the massive amount of complete junk that comes from my darkroom but I do not mind showing the process of building a complete body of work. At the risk of seeming too open I enjoy letting others see what I am making…the good, bad, and the ugly.

The three black glass ambrotypes (wet plate) above were made over the past weekend.  In fact they were made in the afternoon after a morning of working another portrait session.  The whole day was plagued with problems which ranged from poorly cleaned plates, to exposure issues (see above), and just general juju not working.  The day was challenging, and early on I thought that it might be best to call it quits and limit my losses.  In the end the day work out well enough with having friends over and burning through a good amount of VERY aged collodion which is about shot.

The images above are part of a project that I am calling Personal Legends.  Personal Legends is a collection of wet plate collodion portraits of people that I know. To take just a slightly different view of the portrait, the Personal Legend plates focus on an object that the subject has chosen to hold and not the persons face. The object represents something deep and defining about who the person thinks they are. This project is about how we see ourselves as much as how we want to be seen.  Although still very early on in the process of exploration of this project many interesting things are already starting to show themselves.  I am looking forward to see how the work evolves as I live with the idea more.

The other Personal Legends can be seen in this Flickr Set.