Marshall Fields, 2009 11x14"
Honored to be part of the Museum of Contemporary Fine Print program for 2011. Along with the above image of mine, you can purchase prints by Adam Ekberg, Aspen Mays, Ross Sawyers, Kristan Horton, Kahn & Selsenick and Marcela Taboada. $300 a pop.
The Marshall Fields photograph was made in the summer of 2009 in a former Marshall Fields in Park Forest, IL. Park Forest Plaza was one of the first and largest ‘cluster’ shopping centers in the US. You can read more about the history of the Park Forest Plaza here and here. The building was demolished in the winter of 2010 and if you want to really add authenticity and aura, the Park Forest Historical Society is selling bricks from the former building.
Grill from Century Theater Projector, Date Unknown
In 1997 I made the difficult decision to leave NYC and a great job at the Howard Greenberg Gallery in favor of a return to the midwest. I decided this because it would allow for more time to make photographs. I loved the experience of New York but it left so little time for pictures. I found myself each weekend making the 75mph 7 hour journey from Manhattan to Ohio.
In the kindest of gestures good friend Tom Gitterman (then director of Gallery 292, now he owns his own gallery), sat for a while after the gallery closed on my last day talked for some time as we looked through books. I remember having a long conversation about the Robert Adams book; ‘What We Bought, the New World‘. I simply couldn’t fathom working on a project that encompassing for 4 years. I kept staring at the title where it noted 1970-1974. That context gave the photographs such tenure and totem. The dates marked something so specific and passing as I leafed through the pages. 23 years later the profundity of what Adams had warned us of hit the heart like a knife.
Ironically here I sit now attempting to come to grips with a decade long project of my own (Adams+6?). I can clearly understand how Eugene Smith at some point simply gave up trying to compile the work in Pittsburgh into cohesion, that much investment in a topic so huge can lead to a manic obsession. There must have been simply too much to photograph.
I’m there too. The photographs from the last 3 years have led to lots of time spending in empty malls and abandoned retail boxes. At some point I started picking up things. Receipts, ribbons, an ancient ad, then a large sign. The sign led to other signs and objects. Some trips began to simply be based on collecting empherma. It dawned on me that the historical trajectory in the project is wonderfully epitomized in this retail junk. Cast offs that were never meant to be considering or intellectualized have garnered a new kind of hunt, for the thing itself. And so the lineage goes Retail begat Thrift, Thrift begat Dark Stores, and Dark Stores begat some kind of ridiculous journey to find any and every meaningless retail artifact and do something with it. On the bright side, it’s nice to simply follow the breadcrumb trail, in contrast I’ve been half-jokingly referring to this forthcoming book as an intervention (insert acoustic guitar music pls.).
Last week in conversation with Joerg Colberg we spoke about the whole and the book. It sparked this post on the idea of production vs. time invested in a certain idea. Some musicians at their prime step into a studio with an idea and after a few experiments record some of the most deep and memorable sounds one could image (I like to remind people that improvisation is best when it comes from experience). Others need that long grueling-budget crunching-drummer quitting experience to produce the manifesto album that pushed musical ideas by leaps and bounds. In either context the idea can fizzle or flame, the deeper question might rely on where ideas come from and what possesses a person to invest so much in them.
If I could add a note to that 1997 version of myself looking at books in the backroom of the gallery I’d say be careful what you wish for.
For the 2nd half of my Guggenheim grant last year I proposed to compile the last ten years of work into one cohesive whole:
With each project informing the other, I see an edit of each chapter published together as one book.
I knew the process would in many ways be a grueling one, I can second guess every stage of every stage. There is also a sense of letting go of the lengthy journey that has as an artist given me direction, a place to point my sails if you will.
January and February of 2010 were the beginning of combing the vast archive from Retail to Dark Stores, etc. Many works. In March I had moquette 1 which I took to Fotofest to get some initial feedback. To my surprise the feedback was great and I left with financial support for the project and a plan for the book and exhibition. Though I felt the book itself was at the beginning of a long process of editing, design and content.
February 2010 Version
At this point it’s gone through many iterations. Small to large, chronological, non thematic, on and on. It seems silly to fret so much about something I’ve spent so much time laying out already but it’s simply too close. Luckily help has arrived and Lesley Martin and the folks at Aperture are uber proficient at giving perspective to a large archive of images.
August 2010 Version
At this point a lot is up in the air but in a good way, titles, edits, sequence and the inclusion of the many bits, documents, found objects and signage I’ve been digging from the depths of long dead retail. Needless I’m excited. So many photographers now are making books left and right, I can hardly imagine doing 2.
October 2010 Version
It all goes down this fall, September 2011 will be the publication of the book and the opening of a large exhibition organized by the Cleveland Museum of Art. The exhibition will be a traveling one so if you’d like to see it in your town, sign on!
Aralie At The Beach
Aralie and her Great Grandpa Bill
7 mos now and old enough to hold still for the 8×10.
