In etching, your images are always about layers... layers of visual information, time, layers of removal from your immediate touch through to the finished, imprinted ink on damp paper as it evolves through process and machinery.
Process...
.jpg" alt="" border=0>trainyard
is such an important thing. It is one area of artmaking where your person, your ideas, your struggles all come to a head. So much recent art has dealt with trying to minimize the artist's presence. Slick painting that reveals no brushstroke is one example of this masking of the making.
I encourage you to explore this juicy, conceptual ground in etching, where because it is a mechanized process, you stand the chance to really buck against this and assert your touch, your mark, your living presence.
... of course, all the while you deal with the potential then of reproducing this "sincere act" countless times.
Look up Walter Benjamin.
This photo of the trainyard in downtown G'Boro is not only a record of my walk home on August 31st, but moments captured in two distinct snaps and then filtered through the Photoshop process, posted here in this context, etc... endless layers possible and endless reads from this one banal scene.
Posted by chris at September 1, 2004 08:36 AM