PASSING
2021Tri-color photos
8 x 10 in
Info
For this series I blend technology and techniques old and new to explore traditional subject matter in a fresh light.
The flowers are picked, put in their vase and left in front of the camera over the course of several days and photographed each day using the tricolour process.
In the 1600s when the flower still life was first invented by Dutch artists, it was considered the lowest form of art by the art world. In the hierarchy of genres, members of the Academie felt still life paintings lacked the gravitas needed to be considered Great Art: In 1667 André Félibien wrote:
“He who produces perfect landscapes is above another who only produces fruit, flowers or seafood. He who paints living animals is more estimable than he who only represents dead things without movement, and as man is the most perfect work of god on earth, it is also certain that he who becomes an imitator of god in representing human figures, is much more excellent than all the others.”
As an artist who works with photography as my primary medium, I am very aware of the hierarchy of mediums that still exists in the art world today. Although still life has won its battle for respectability, photography is still fighting for equal representation as a fine art beside the established genres of painting and sculpture.
Through this body of work I explore the question of artistic merit. Where does the value of art come from?
Does artistic merit, as Félibien would have it, indeed come from the subject matter?
Is value conveyed through the amount of time that went into the creation of art? Or the cost of the materials?
Do the technical skills and abilities demonstrated by the artist create the value in a work of art? Or is the most important element the medium they use to make their art?
The true value of art comes from the ideas that are conveyed through it.
All images are taken with a flatbed scanner attached to a handmade 8"x10" camera using an 1882 Dallmeyer Petzval lens. The works are made using a technique from 1861 called tricolour photography. The tricolour process works by taking each photograph on a black and white sensor through a different coloured filter: red, blue, and green.