Specifically, the Medium

Aperture & Distortion by Grant Gomm

In Ian Rhuter’s video Silver & Light, Ian examines the process of wet-plate photography by converting an old delivery van into one large camera.  By covering a sheet of metal with chemicals, then exposing them through a giant lens, Ian creates beautiful images.  He says,  “The reality of the situation is that at this point it costs me five hundred dollars to take a single photo. When I shot my first wet plate image, and to hold something tangible that’s not a negative, it’s not a print.  And it was  so beautiful in my hands. It’s like I create this with silver and light.”  Converting a van into a camera, and spending $500.00 on each picture is not an efficient way to capture an image.  But there is something more to what he is doing.  His process, as he mentions, is really hands on – it’s “tangible.”  But it’s also not just about the process either.  Perhaps there is something intangible we create within us when we examine the medium itself that we choose to express ourselves and our art.

Scott McCloud’s work, Understanding Comics takes an interesting approach at examining comics by creating a comic about, well, comics. His piece is about defining what a comic is.  He says, “If people failed to understand comics, it was because they defined what comics could be too narrowly!”  He then compares comics to such things as the Bayeux Tapestry, pre-columbian art, and Egyptian hieroglyphics.  What better way to discuss a medium than through the medium itself?

In my piece, I examine photography and digital manipulation through photography and digital manipulation.  Originally I started out with an idea inspired by Andy Warhol’s Eight Elvises, and Ian Rhuter’s wet plate photography, and decided to make an image of a series of cameras each shot at a different aperture, lined up next to each other similar to Warhol’s piece.  An old Nikon 35mm film camera was cast as my subject, according to plan.  I took a series of locked-down pictures from a tripod mounted DSLR of the old Nikon in whole stops from f/2 through f/22 (f/2, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16, and f/22).  Those familiar with photography will understand that by also decreasing the shutter speed in whole stops, I was able to maintain equivalent exposure.  Therefore, the only differences between each picture is the depth of field.  But when it came time to manipulate the images in Photoshop, my original idea went out the window.  I wanted to say more about photography than just examine the aperture.  So I decided to make a picture with many ways to look at photography.  

In my finished work above, the cameras are positioned to create a chase scene that is reminiscent of a Star Wars battle of x-wing fighters being chased by ti-fighters.  Each camera image is placed in a layering manner from left to right, and front to back, as well as large to small.  On the right side of the image, the larger cameras represent a larger aperture and more light, more exposure.  The cameras on the left represent a smaller aperture, accounting for their size, and less light, or a darker exposure.  In the analogy of the Star Wars chase scene, they can be recognized as being on the “dark side”.  

Further, the lenses and cameras are distorted. Sometimes we like to say “the camera doesn’t lie,” but the reality is that often the lens of a camera can in fact distort the truth.  And then finally, there’s the chase.  It seems that each photographer is chasing the next, fighting for “the money shot.”

"The Plum Jar" by Grant Gomm and Camden Argyle

Click here to view the script.

Artist Statement

Hollywood has attempted to tell the stories of World War II nearly since the end of the war.  Movies like Saving Private Ryan, The Longest Day, and Series like Band of Brothers all tell the stories from the perspective of the soldiers who fought in the war.  

Audie Murphy was the most decorated U.S. soldier during the war, and even starred in the movie To Hell and Back where he played the role of himself, telling his story while he fought in the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division.  In 1945, in what is now famously known as the Colmar Pocket in Eastern France, Murphy held off an entire company of German soldiers by himself for over an hour.  He was awarded the Medal of Honor for this achievement.  

But what about the average citizen that was liberated by the allied armies portrayed in these films?  What is their story?  What was their experience having to endure German occupation for nearly six years?  One moment they are under the control of the Nazi German government, then the bombs fall and bullets fly.  Sometimes the fighting lasted for many days as was the case during the battle of Jebsheim, which was a part of the Colmar Pocket - the same offensive fought in by Audie Murphy. Today, the French Foreign Legion tells the story from their perspective on their official website, http://www.legionetrangere.fr (be sure to click the British flag in the upper right corner for the English version).

But again, what about the citizens?  Do they not have stories to tell?  Not far from Jebsheim, and within a few short minutes from the German border is the village of Durrenentzen.  Lucy Eischer, who had been a long time resident of the village told a story that she experienced shortly after the French and American forces pushed the Germans out.  Lucy’s story is the framework for The Plum Jar.

From the outset, we wanted to preserve historical integrity as much as possible.  Emails were sent reaching out to Lucy through her family in Durrenentzen.  Even still, not all of the details could be filled in, so some things were fictionalized to help the flow of the story.  As we fleshed out the missing parts, we found ourselves devising unique ways to recreate the history, or at least to tell the story as we imagined it.  

One such exchange was when a fictionalized object, a jar of pickles we said was found by the story’s narrator, Lucy, was turned in to a symbol, then becoming a metaphor ultimately underlining the theme of the story.  The idea was that the jar of pickles represent  goodwill, charity, and perhaps even forgiveness that was extended by the villagers to starving, young soldiers on their escape back to Germany.  When one of the soldiers is shot and killed, the jar fell, shattering on the ground, symbolizing that peace was not to be had in spite of best efforts.

As we discussed this metaphor, we felt that pickles were not the right item.  They are tart, sometimes a little bitter.  We decided to fill the jar with something sweet – the local plums known as "quetsches".  Not only did that satisfy the demands of historic plausibility, but we felt the sweetness of candied plums better represented the meaning of the metaphor.  This metaphor then became the title of the script, alluding to the meaning of the The Plum Jar.

Albert Gantz, and his "papers" during the Nazi occupation of Alsace.

Nice, Ice baby!

We are often encouraged to look a little less at the destination and 'enjoy the journey.' But how often do we actually do it? The point of the process piece is to stop for a minute to see beyond simply the product. In this creation, the means carry far more meaning than the end, and in many ways supersede its value. The short film Five, for example, is more concerned with showing the commonality of children preparing for religious initiation rather than the initiations themselves. For our creative work, we wanted to capture the experience of our first time ice climbing. It's always a bit of a sketchy ordeal, and most climbers have sort of “figured it out” with their buddies. Our process of capturing the experience in audio followed on those same lines. We didn't give too much forethought to what our finished product would be—we just went up and tried to figure it out as we went. And we don't think we're alone. The unique creative process for each individual is, in some ways, common. We can appreciate, for example, a child's drawing; for though it may lack understanding, it conveys pure ideas and demonstrates the child's creative process. We can see a similar creativity in the body of Jackson Pollock's artwork. He is described as an action painter, wherein the process of the painting takes precedent over form and function. It's expressionism, not of ideas, but of emotion and movement. I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.” —Pollock In documenting our experience with ice climbing, it was interesting to realize that we spent very little time actually climbing ice. The bulk of our time was spent hiking, setting up the equipment, and learning what to do. The enjoyments did not come so much from completing the climb. They came from the camaraderie of being with cool people and enjoying the beauties of the ice fall and inclement weather. We had hoped to include the process of actually recording the event, but due to constrictions we were unable to. Thus the narrative of the piece really evolved on its own. Unlike Pollock, we didn't have the luxury of limitlessness on our side, so it was all we could do to express something coherent. Our process is about learning to ice climb, but the real process that occurred was in putting the composition together. Listen closely and realize that this piece is made up of many layers, agonizingly stitched together to express in two minutes the events of an entire day.

Exquisitely Round, Robin Corpse (Pop!)

In the early 1920’s, a new surge of art overcame the aesthetic world. In a hodgepodge of dreamlike, nonsensical images, surrealism was born. The point of surrealist art was to challenge convention-- it represented an uncomfortable deviance from reality. As this art form developed, a parlor game developed along with it. Sitting in their vintage suits, surrealist artists drew a bit of a picture, hid all but the very bottom, and passed it on to another artist to continue. The result was usually grotesque, and always fascinating. An Exquisite Corpse-- a mixture of different artists’ ideas and images that couldn’t quite fit together in a homogeneous form. In an attempt to recreate our own form of this surrealist experiment, we passed snapshots of stories through our round robin of creativity. The resulting stories were just as fascinating as the results of the 1920’s parlor game.

Very early on in the process, we had to surrender our stories. We watched our initial snapshot twist into a jumbled mess of other people’s creative flows. After we got over the initial shock of losing control, however, the process became something beautiful. We “...enjoyed the mesmerising flow of fragments” (Paul D. Miller, “Totems Without Taboos: The Exquisite Corpse”). The beauty of our combined creative flows helped us create our hodgepodge of nonsense. That hodgepodge, however, was the point of this whole exercise. When our stories made the least amount of sense, doors of creativity opened in our minds. Suddenly making sense didn’t matter. Fitting a mold didn’t matter. Our “flow of fragments” turned into a pure example of our own freed thought processes and creativity.

Our project process represents something beyond stories-- it represents the world’s creative process on a microscopic scale. Everybody works so differently, sees so differently, processes so differently, that every bit of art is subject to billions of unique perspectives. We may never create anything completely original, but we create things that are uniquely our own. Nobody will be able to copy the intrinsic meaning we assign to our own art, just as we will never understand exactly what somebody else’s art means. All of the art in this world comes from this individual synthesis of our surroundings. Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí worked together on the 1929 film “Un Chien Adalou”, resulting in a nonsensical representation of their dreams in art form. They didn’t come up with anything new, they just came up with their own interpretation of the information they had.

The tenuous strings of narratives we created illustrate the simple, beautiful fact of our diversity. We work so differently, see so differently, process so differently… Isn’t it amazing how individual our worlds are? How we are able to come up with such a unique synthesis of our surroundings? Our stories are barely interconnected, overflowing with our ideas and interpretations and information. We may not have made sense in our exquisite corpse storyboards, but we did make something-- and that, ultimately, is what matters.

Clever Buster Series

#1 Buster was young, barking, biting, and chewing.  He quickly changed his mind after a zap from the Christmas tree lights.

By Grant Gomm

#2  Buster thought nobody was watching, but a cop was passing by and Buster got busted.

By Pepe Callejas

#3 Buster broke the law so he was thrown into the pound.  He knew he had to escape.

By Brandon Carraway

#4  After sneaking in and taking out the guards, Buster's poker buddies helped him escape prison.

By Zach Connell

#5  After all, he had a debt to pay.

By Madison Ellis

Fusion, Synthesis: Elemental

Blackmill’s Rain and the works of fine art nature photographer Michael Fatali have fused deep in the grey-matter of my mind inspiring a series of photographs that visualize this synthesis.  Blackmill's "melodic dubstep" is rich with sounds and complex layers existing in time, rhythm, and beat.  But Michael Fatali's images are timeless.  They are portraits of nature that capture the uniquely lit deep colors of red-rock landscapes hewn by the hand of nature.  But to understand the genesis of what I see in Rain, you must look deeper at these images, peering into the picture to the point where all that is left is abstract.  If all you see is simply water, snow, ice, or perhaps a frozen waterfall, you’ll miss it. 

Rain is made up of different layers of sound.  Now, I am not educated in music.  I am a visual person so explaining musical structure and form is a challenge.  However, I’ve tried to capture these aural layers in images inspired by Fatali and show you what I cannot verbalize.  By looking at the form alone, and ignoring the obvious - that you see freezing droplets of water, chunks of ice, and piles of snow - what I want to tell you about this song begins to take shape.

In Annie Dillard’s essay, Seeing, she talks about those that were once blind, who had their vision restored.  Upon removal of their bandages, some saw shapes and colors, not associating them with known objects.  As you look at my images this way, you will see how the droplets are bright staccato notes dancing lightly in the air.  Where you once saw rocks, a cliff, or ground, you will see a solid baseline with decisive percussion forming hard angles for the ice to grip.  You will also see snow and ice-made stalagmites forming flowing sounds of undulating, changing shape. 

The song’s layers contrast and still complement each other as they form one harmonic sound.  This idea of contrast is important in these images.  When you begin to see the lines between the bright and dark, the shape of the music begins to take form.  The depth that is created when the shape is illuminated, the light disappearing into black voids around curves and corners, is what gives us the images we see.  It is this contrast between the bright staccato and soft lulling drones of Rain moving through time that enable each image to speak.

Let’s look for a moment at the natural processes that made this.  Light, hydrogen, oxygen, temperature, and time all come together in just the right order and under just the right conditions to make what we see.  As the water flows, or as it falls in the cold, it solidifies layer upon layer – growing ever higher into a castle where creatures of the imagination rule.  Snow gathers making what looks like a soft white blanket.  But look closer, you can see jagged edges of each flake as it reaches up and out like a thousand hands raised waving goodbye to the clouds that formed them.

Finally, clothed in hues of light, the frozen citadel takes on the blend of notes soft and warm, cold and sharp. Look to the colors in between and feel which sound is calling to you.

‘Making a Murderer’ Making a Buzz

Type the name “Steven Avery” into a Google search and an innumerable list of articles will appear about  Netflix’s new ten hour docuseries, Making a Murderer.  In the mid 80’s, Avery was wrongfully convicted of assaulting a woman, and spent 18 years as an innocent man in prison in Wisconsin.  After DNA evidence exonerated him, and he was released in 2003, he filed a $36 million dollar lawsuit for wrongful conviction against the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Department.  Two years later, he was arrested for the murder of a photographer who worked for Auto Trader Magazine, Teresa Halbach.  Avery was tried and convicted of the murder, and is now serving a life sentence. Setting the stage as a frame-up job by the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Department,  Making a Murderer is a rally cry for justice using Steven Avery as an example of what can happen to innocent people when the system we trust to protect us becomes corrupt.  But will all this buzz be enough to actually lead to eventually proving his innocence?

After being released for less than a month, the movement resulting from Making a Murderer has already reached the President of the United States.  A petition was started on December 20th on the official Whitehouse Petition website, http://petitions.whitehouse.gov and after getting over 100,000 signatures, has received an official response.  The response noted that Steven Avery and his nephew, Brendan Dassey, who was said to be an accomplice, were held as prisoners by the State of Wisconsin, and are not under federal jurisdiction.  Therefore the President does not have power to grant clemency in this case.

However, the message is still getting out.  Forbes.com labeled Making a Murderer “Netflix’s Most Significant Show Ever.”  Still, there are articles, podcasts, and debates all over the internet talking about this less than a month old docuseries.  CNN.com, Rollingstone.com, abcnews.go.com, and PopSugar.com are just a handful of the websites that are in one way or another getting the word out.

So what makes this show what it is?  It is composed of interviews of family members, attorneys, friends, and relatives of the victim, as well as the woman Steven Avery was originally accused of assaulting, but for which he was exonerated. There is old news footage, footage from the trial itself, and even clips of Dassey’s interrogation where the investigators are clearly manipulating him into telling the story they want to hear.

During these interrogations, it quickly becomes evident that Dassey must have some sort of intellectual disability, and really doesn’t understand what is going on.  He shows no sense of fear or concern for the situation, and readily changes his story at key verbal queues issued by the interrogating officers.  One of the facts regarding Halbach’s murder is that she was shot in the head.  However, that piece of evidence was not released, and the two officers tried for some time to get Dassey to confess to that.  Dassey, trying to give them what they wanted (but not knowing what it was), would respond with gruesome answers as he was asked what they did to Halbach’s head.  Dassey would take some time and think like he was making up a story to please his interrogators.  With each answer the police would tell him that they knew the truth, and like a puppy begging for a treat, Dassey would come up with something new.  Exasperated that they weren’t getting the answer that they were looking for, one of the officers came right out and said that they knew she had been shot in the head, and asked him who did it.  If the few clips of Dassey’s interrogation were not enough, online articles are linking to Dassey’s entire interrogation videos on YouTube.

Also in this docuseries, it is shown how the initial murder investigation of Teresa Halbach was handled.  To avoid any apparent conflict of interest due to Avery’s then pending lawsuit with the MCSO, the investigation was conducted by the Calumet County Sheriff’s Office, and Manitowoc officers were not supposed to be on site.  However, two Manitowoc officers who were involved in Avery’s original assault charge, and also individually named on the lawsuit along with Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Office, began assisting with the investigation.  In fact, it was one of these two officers who found the key to Halbach’s Toyota RAV4 laying on the floor of Avery’s bedroom after Calumet had already been searching the room for several days.  Another interesting note is that only Avery’s DNA was found on the key.  It is noted in Making a Murderer that Halbach’s key was old and well used, and therefore her DNA should have been on the key as well, suggesting that the key had been wiped clean of any DNA, and then Avery’s DNA had been added.  This series also points out that there is no blood nor DNA of any kind belonging to Halbach at the alleged crime scene.  It is details like these that make up this series that point to Avery being framed.

Of course, there is the possibility that Avery and Dassey are in fact guilty of an incredibly horrific crime.  If that’s the case, then pushing the buttons too much, and their potential release would only let two very dangerous men out from behind bars.  Perhaps this docuseries left out some very important information that influenced the jury to come to a guilty verdict.  Although it is important to note that there were jurors on Avery’s trial that were employed by the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Office.

Either way – truly guilty or not – Making a Murderer is gaining traction and support for Avery and Dassey.  Kathleen Zellner is an attorney who has the highest number of exonerations of any lawyer in the country, and she has taken over Avery’s case since the airing of this show.  In an article on thewrap.com, Zellner states that there is “new evidence” and she is “…confident Mr. Avery’s conviction will be vacated…”