Modern Alchemy: Experiments in Photography Illustrated Checklist

29 Pages·2014·2.63 MB·English

by  Kerrilyn Weiss

Modern Alchemy: Experiments in Photography

Illustrated Checklist

(alphabetical by artist’s last name)

December 6, 2014 --- March 15, 2015

Bill Armstrong (American, b. 1952)
Untitled (Film Noir #1437), 2012
Type-C print, 24 x 20 in.
Courtesy of the artist and ClampArt,
New York City

Bill Armstrong is interested in visual perception and
his work explores how the eye reconciles visual
information. Untitled (Film Noir #1437) belongs to his
extensive Infinity series, in which the artist uses an
extreme out-of-focus range to create figurative, yet
abstract images steeped in color. He begins with a
collage created from appropriated images that he
has transformed in a variety of ways by
photocopying, painting, and cutting. He adds colored
foregrounds and backgrounds and, setting his
camera’s focus to infinity, photographs the collage
as a close-up. The edges of the individual elements
become blurred, dematerializing the figures and
creating “rhapsodies of color,” in the words of the
artist, that evoke hazy memories or vague dreams.
While the Infinity series comprises several discrete
portfolios, the Film Noir photographs refer to classic
black-and-white films from the 1940s and 50s.
These works address themes of loneliness and
alienation by depicting an indistinct solitary figure
against an equally amorphous background, evoking
the moral dilemmas of film noir characters, as well
as of modern man.
Damion Berger (British, b. 1978)
Fiac I, Jardin des Tuileries, Paris 2009 (from
the Black Powder series)
Pigment ink print on Baryta paper, Diasec
mounted in artist’s frame, 159 x 201 cm
Lent by the Artist

Fiac I, Jardin de Tuileries belongs to Damion
Berger’s Black Powder series, which records the
spectacle of pyrotechnic celebrations in locations
around the world. In this work, the overlapping
vectors chart the trajectories of fireworks during a
performance in Paris. To achieve the heavily
demarcated lines, Berger uses a large-format
camera with the lens stopped down to its smallest
aperature, f/64. Long and overlapping exposures
timed in sync with each explosion record the paths
of multiple bursts on a single negative. Berger then
prints in the negative to reverse the black and white
areas and enhance the tonal scale. While his

method is controlled, his images depend on the
The Heckscher Museum of Art
This illustrated checklist for the exhibition Modern
2 Prime Avenue
Alchemy: Experiments in Photography is to be used for
Huntington, NY 11743
631.351.3250 educational purposes in coordination with the high
www.heckscher.org school student exhibition Long Island’s Best: Young

Artists at The Heckscher Museum 2015.
Education Department
631.351.3214
unpredictable nature of the subject. In some of the
more abstract works, such as Untitled X (seen
elsewhere in this gallery), Berger readjusts the focus
of the camera between exposures, deliberately
shooting out-of-focus images that capture, in his
own words, “analogue artifacts sculpted by the
mechanics of the lens and shaped by the
arrangement of the shutter blades.”

Berger’s interest in plotting the paths of these
explosions relates to photography’s perpetual
fascination with the documentation of motion, seen
in the work of 19th century photographers like
Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey, who
spent much of their careers studying animal and
human locomotion. Unlike Muybridge and Marey,
however, Berger captures multiple phases of
movement on a single frame, more akin to some of
the motion studies by Thomas Eakins that captured
multiple phases of movement in a single image.
Damion Berger (British, b. 1978)
Untitled X, 2010
Pigment ink print on Baryta paper, Diasec
mounted in artists frame, 135 x 168 cm
Lent by the Artist

Théodore Brauner (Romanian, 1914-2000)
Untitled ("Solarfix"), ca. 1950
Chemically-enhanced vintage gelatin silver
print affixed to original mount
25-1/4 x 19-1/2 in.
Ubu Gallery & Janos Gat Gallery, New York

Théodore Brauner was a self-taught photographer.
His family moved from Vienna to Bucharest when he
was only one, and from a young age he was
haunted by “a black and white imprint in [his] inner
image,” which he later attempted to reconcile
through photography.

Around 1934, solarfixes became Brauner’s primary
means of expression as he moved toward a lensless
practice of capturing light. Like the cyanotype
process invented in 1842 by chemist and

astronomer John Herschel, a solarfix relies on the
The Heckscher Museum of Art
This illustrated checklist for the exhibition Modern
2 Prime Avenue
Alchemy: Experiments in Photography is to be used for
Huntington, NY 11743
631.351.3250 educational purposes in coordination with the high
www.heckscher.org school student exhibition Long Island’s Best: Young

Artists at The Heckscher Museum 2015.
Education Department
631.351.3214
exposure to direct sunlight of a chemically soaked,
light sensitive paper. To create a solarfix, Brauner
coated his paper with a mix of chemicals (the details
of which are unknown), dried it, and then placed it in
the sun, obtaining organic forms that are virtually
painted by the atmosphere, unlike the defined
shades and shapes in a photogram.

Like a traditional alchemist, Brauner was interested
in both the animate and inanimate and much of his
photographic career can be interpreted as an
attempt to reconcile the two. His father’s interest in
Theosophy and his brother’s, and eventually his
own, penchant for Surrealism, undoubtedly
influenced his psychic inclination. Theosophy was a
popular 19th century philosophy that experienced a
resurgence in Western European thought in the
early 20th century. It propounded the belief that
God’s omnipresence can only be known through
mystical experiences. Brauner’s solarfixes can be
seen as an attempt to connect with an elemental
spirit through the chance meeting of nature and the
unconscious.
Josef Breitenbach (American, b. Germany,
1896-1984)
Huntsman's Luck, New York, c. 1946-49
Vintage gelatin silver print, 13-3/4 x 10-7/8 in.
© Josef and Yaye Breitenbach Foundation,
Courtesy Gitterman Gallery

Josef Breitenbach began his career as a portrait
photographer and worked with traditional and
experimental processes throughout his life. His
family instilled in him a profound respect for the
history of art and culture, and his work reveals his
appreciation for many artistic styles, including
Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. Fleeing
World War II, Breitenbach immigrated to New York
in 1942. At the invitation of Josef Albers, he taught
photography at the progressive Black Mountain
College in North Carolina and later joined the faculty

at Cooper Union and The New School in New York.

Breitenbach explored various experimental
processes, including photograms, solarization, and
combination printing, as well as chemical
experimentation with bleaching, toning, and
pigments, as seen in Huntsman’s Luck, New York
and Fall.
The Heckscher Museum of Art
This illustrated checklist for the exhibition Modern
2 Prime Avenue
Alchemy: Experiments in Photography is to be used for
Huntington, NY 11743
631.351.3250 educational purposes in coordination with the high
www.heckscher.org school student exhibition Long Island’s Best: Young

Artists at The Heckscher Museum 2015.
Education Department
631.351.3214
Josef Breitenbach (American, b. Germany,
1896-1984)
Fall, c. 1946-49
Vintage toned and colored gelatin silver print
13-5/8 x 10-5/8 in. (34.61 x 26.99 cm)
© Josef and Yaye Breitenbach Foundation,
Courtesy Gitterman Gallery

Marco Breuer (German, b. 1966)
Untitled (C-1097), 2011
Chromogenic paper, scratched,
23-1/4 x 19-9/16 in.
Collection of Peter J. Cohen

Rigorously trained in the science of photographic
materials and processes, Marco Breuer’s practice
centers on image-making as a direct interaction with
the photographic paper itself. Eschewing camera,
lens, and negative, Breuer exposes light-sensitive
paper to full-spectrum light and abrades its surface
in various ways – scratching, scraping, sanding, and
burning it. The abstract compositions created rely on
the revelation of layers of color within the emulsion.
Breuer’s interest in the material essence of the
photograph asserts the primacy of the object itself.
Its subject is self-referential; determined by the

nature of the photographic paper, the image is a
record of Breuer’s performance to create it.

The Heckscher Museum of Art
This illustrated checklist for the exhibition Modern
2 Prime Avenue
Alchemy: Experiments in Photography is to be used for
Huntington, NY 11743
631.351.3250 educational purposes in coordination with the high
www.heckscher.org school student exhibition Long Island’s Best: Young

Artists at The Heckscher Museum 2015.
Education Department
631.351.3214
Dan Burkholder (American, b. 1950)
Overlapping Trees, Palenville, 2009
Platinum/palladium on vellum
over gold leaf print,
5-3/4 x 4-1/2 in.
Lent by the Artist

Dan Burkholder was one of the earliest
photographers to work with digital technologies and
his images represent a marriage of digital and
traditional processes. In 1992, he developed a digital
negative technique to create traditional black-and-
white prints. In Overlapping Trees, Palenville,
Burkholder uses the historic platinum/palladium
process to print on vellum, a translucent parchment-
like paper. Gold leaf is then painted onto the back of
the photograph, toning the image as it shines
through the paper. The gold leaf adds depth and an
ethereal glow unattainable in the gray scale usually
associated with black-and-white printing. The soft
focus obtained by the use of vellum and gold leaf
recalls the painterly aspects of Pictorialist
photographs by artists like Edward Steichen and
Alfred Stieglitz in the late 19th century.

Passing Sheep, Tuscany, Rowboat on Lake, Central
Park, and Hay Bales, Tuscany are iPhone capture
images manipulated using a variety of common
imaging apps. For Burkholder, iPhone technology
places the camera and darkroom into the palm of
one’s hands.

Dan Burkholder (American, b. 1950)
Rowboat on Lake, Central Park, 2013
Archival pigment print on varnished vellum
over gesso print, iPhone capture, 5 x 5 in.
Lent by the Artist

The Heckscher Museum of Art
This illustrated checklist for the exhibition Modern
2 Prime Avenue
Alchemy: Experiments in Photography is to be used for
Huntington, NY 11743
631.351.3250 educational purposes in coordination with the high
www.heckscher.org school student exhibition Long Island’s Best: Young

Artists at The Heckscher Museum 2015.
Education Department
631.351.3214
Dan Burkholder (American, b. 1950)
Passing Sheep, Tuscany, 2013
Archival pigment print on varnished vellum over
gesso print, iPhone capture, 4 x 5-1/2 in.
Lent by the Artist

Dan Burkholder (American, b. 1950)
Hay Bales, Tuscany, 2013
Archival pigment print on varnished vellum over
gesso print, iPhone capture, 5 x 5 in.
Lent by the Artist

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Chicago, 1946 (printed c. 1980)
Dye transfer print
15 x 19-5/8 in. (38.1 x 49.85 cm)
Courtesy of Bruce Silverstein Gallery,
New York

Harry Callahan was a self-taught photographer
whose work focused on landscapes, street scenes,
and portraiture. Among the most influential
American photographers of the post-war period, he

began teaching at the Institute of Design in Chicago
in 1946. The Institute’s experimental approach
helped Callahan form his own aesthetic. His work
explored the abstract forms in nature, and he is
credited with introducing formal abstraction to
photography. Chicago, created during his first year
at the Institute of Design, belongs to a group of
experimental works that capture the path of
flashlight in a dark room, evoking photography’s
essence as images drawn with light.

The Heckscher Museum of Art
This illustrated checklist for the exhibition Modern
2 Prime Avenue
Alchemy: Experiments in Photography is to be used for
Huntington, NY 11743
631.351.3250 educational purposes in coordination with the high
www.heckscher.org school student exhibition Long Island’s Best: Young

Artists at The Heckscher Museum 2015.
Education Department
631.351.3214
Ellen Carey (American, b. 1952)
Pull & Rollback with Mixed Pods, 2011
Polaroid 20x24 color positive print – unique,
68 x 22 in.
Collection of David Evangelista (New York,
NY); Courtesy of Jayne H. Baum Gallery
(New York, NY)

For over 30 years, Ellen Carey’s work has centered

on an exploration of light, color, and process. In
1996, she began creating Polaroid “pulls,” in which
color-filled parabolas are created using a large
format, 20x24 (inch) Polaroid camera. In these
works, the film is exposed to colored light and
literally pulled through the camera’s rollers beyond
the usual 24 inches. The color dyes combine during
this process creating unique hues in shapes
determined by the placement of the pods and the
action of the pull. Later, Carey began adding a
“rollback,” in which she rotated the paper, re-loaded
it onto the spool, exposed it, and again pulled it
through the rollers, producing unanticipated shapes,
colors and striations.

First developed in 1976, the 20x24 Polaroid camera
allowed photographers to create instant large-scale
photographs that did not require traditional darkroom
processing. Rolls of negative film and positive paper
are loaded into the camera with pods containing
color that is released through the action of pulling
the negative film and positive paper through the
camera together, similar to the mechanical process
of the smaller hand-held instant cameras first
developed by Edwin Land in 1948. Carey’s work
speaks to fascination with the Polaroid process in
the 1970s among artists like William Wegman,
Chuck Close, and Robert Rauschenberg. While
their work relied on representational images, Carey’s
subject is the chemical and mechanical workings of
the camera itself. In her pulls and rollbacks, process
and color function as both subject and object.
Joe Constantino (American, b. 1931)
Brooklyn Bridge with Hot Dog Stand, 2012
Solarized digital print, 13 x 19 in.
Gift of the Artist.

Initially trained as a musician, Joe Constantino first
became interested in photography while traveling in
Europe. His earliest work was in sports photography
and he later turned to nature and fine art subjects.
Since the early 1970s, Constantino has devoted his
attention to working in black- and-white. He first
explored the possibilities offered by infrared
photography, in which reversals of light and dark
and heightened detail produce images of a
dreamlike world. In his more recent work,
Constantino experiments with solarized imagery.
Traditionally occurring by accident when a negative
or print was exposed to light during darkroom
The Heckscher Museum of Art
This illustrated checklist for the exhibition Modern
2 Prime Avenue
Alchemy: Experiments in Photography is to be used for
Huntington, NY 11743
631.351.3250 educational purposes in coordination with the high
www.heckscher.org school student exhibition Long Island’s Best: Young

Artists at The Heckscher Museum 2015.
Education Department
631.351.3214
processing, solarization reverses the tones in a
photograph so that light areas appear dark and dark
areas appear light. The technique was exploited for
its aesthetic merits by Man Ray in the 1930s,
although Constantino produces his solarized images
through Photoshop, transforming a digital image to
monochrome and then reversing its tonality. While
the subject of Brooklyn Bridge with Hot Dog Stand is
a familiar New York street scene, the reversal of
tones creates a surreal image beyond ordinary
vision.

Kevin Cooley (American, b.1975)
Moon Traveler 1, 2013
Chromogenic print (photogram), 60 x 40 in.
© Kevin Cooley. Courtesy Kopeikin Gallery

Los Angeles based artist, Kevin Cooley, is
engrossed with the intersection between chaos and
control, which he explores in various media,
including photography, video, and installation art. In
much of his photography, he focuses on the theme
of light in nature. Moon Traveler 1 documents the
explosion of a firework on a sheet of photographic
paper, the explosion itself providing the light that
exposes the image as the firework trails away. Like
Melissa Fleming, Klea McKenna, and Floris
Neusüss (seen elsewhere in the exhibition), Cooley
creates this photogram outside of the darkroom,
capturing an unplanned, abstracted view of a natural
process.

Pierre Cordier (Belgian, b. 1933)
& Gundi Falk (Austrian, b. 1966)
Chemigram 18/6/13 "Pair-Impair", 2013
Chemigram on paper, 19-3/4 x 19-3/4 in.
Von Lintel Gallery, Los Angeles and the Artist

When asked where he lies on the spectrum of art
history, Pierre Cordier replied, “I’m neither a painter
nor a photographer, but a little of each.” Invented in
1956 by Cordier, the chemigram is a hybrid of these
two mediums, a photograph made with neither a
camera nor a negative, but directly on the
photographic paper itself.

Chemigram 18/6/13 "Pair-Impair" was made with the
Austrian painter and artist Gundi Falk, with whom
Cordier began to collaborate in 2011. When creating
a chemigram, the artists work with light sensitive
paper in broad daylight. The sheet is covered with
various resists, such as varnish, wax, syrup, or
honey. Each resist produces a different texture.
Varnish and wax, the harder resists, produce
sharper images, while syrup and honey produce
softer, less distinct forms. The paper is incised with
various shapes and then soaked alternatively in
developer and fixer, two chemical baths found in the
The Heckscher Museum of Art
This illustrated checklist for the exhibition Modern
2 Prime Avenue
Alchemy: Experiments in Photography is to be used for
Huntington, NY 11743
631.351.3250 educational purposes in coordination with the high
www.heckscher.org school student exhibition Long Island’s Best: Young

Artists at The Heckscher Museum 2015.
Education Department
631.351.3214
traditional film darkroom. These alternate soaks
cause physical transformations and chemical
reactions between the resists, the light, and the
chemicals, creating a complex image of nuanced

detail.
Melissa Fleming (American, b. 1975)
Sea Change 4, 2006
Unique palladium photogram, 11 x 14 in.
Lent by the Artist

Melissa Fleming describes herself as an artist “who
is interested in the duality of the visible and invisible,
the relationship between realism and abstraction,
and the interplay between art and science.” She is
fascinated by nature, especially its transient and
unseen aspects. In her Sea Change series, Fleming
uses a photogram technique to explore the ever-
changing ocean. Holding light sensitive paper in the
break of a wave, she allows sand, algae, and
sediment to wash over the paper and settle into a
pattern as it simultaneously exposes in the sunlight.
The abstract photogram created records the
movement of organic materials within an individual
wave, while the images within the series as a whole
vary from wave to wave, reflecting both the infinite
diversity in nature and its eternal rhythms. Although
a microcosm, they often reflect the macrocosm of
the natural world.
Adam Fuss (American/British, b. 1961)
Untitled, 1994
Unique Cibachrome photogram, 14 x 11 in.
Collection of Peter J. Cohen

Adam Fuss has returned to photography’s origins in
his exploration of the pinhole camera and the
cameraless photogram. This color photogram
belongs to a series of biological studies in which the
artist investigates the nature of light. Exposing the
calla lilies on top of light-sensitive paper produced
gradations of color dependent on the translucence of
the petals. The series evokes William Henry Fox
Talbot’s black and white photograms of botanical
specimens, dating as early as 1839, although Fox
Talbot’s intent was scientific documentation, while
Fuss is more concerned with the nature of the
process itself. In later works, his exploration of light
and chemistry becomes more physical, as his
selection of objects is based upon their direct
chemical interaction with the dye layers in the paper.
The Heckscher Museum of Art
This illustrated checklist for the exhibition Modern
2 Prime Avenue
Alchemy: Experiments in Photography is to be used for
Huntington, NY 11743
631.351.3250 educational purposes in coordination with the high
www.heckscher.org school student exhibition Long Island’s Best: Young

Artists at The Heckscher Museum 2015.
Education Department
631.351.3214
Robert Heinecken (American, 1931-2006)
PP/Surrealism-C, 1990
Dye bleach print photogram from
magazine page
14 x 11 in. (35.6 x 27.9 cm)
Courtesy of The Robert Heinecken Trust,
Chicago and Petzel Gallery, New York

Robert Heinecken described himself as a “para-
photographer”—someone who operates beside or
beyond traditional photography. He pushed the
boundaries between photography and other fine arts
mediums, incorporating photographic processes and
materials into painting, sculpture, printmaking, and
installations. He was obsessed with the effects of
popular culture on society and American attitudes
towards gender, sex, and violence. His work also
explores the relationship between the original and
the copy in our ever-growing technological age, and
he often appropriated images from magazines,
packaging, and television.

In PP/Surrealism-C, Heinecken created a photogram
that superimposed the front and back of a page from
a magazine, a technique he had previously explored
in black and white in his Are You Rea series (1964-
68) and in color in the Recto/Verso series (late
1980s). In these photograms, surreal juxtapositions
emerge that highlight American vanity,
consumerism, and superficiality.

A dedicated teacher, Heinecken established the
graduate photography program at UCLA in 1964. In
the essay “I Am Involved in Learning to Perceive
and Use Light” (April 1974), he expressed his
approach to the medium: “I am not so concerned
with the photographic medium as a smooth
rectangular window out, but as a variously shaped
and surfaced vehicle in.”

Barbara Jaffe
Dark Sun #62, 2005
Digital C-print, 24 x 20 in.
Lent by the Artist

Reflecting her interest in the dual nature of reality,
Barbara Jaffe’s work explores the expressive
possibilities of the negative print. The reversal of
black and white tones reveals an opposite world, an
alternate version of reality that the eye cannot
perceive, in the artist’s words, “the truth just below
the surface.” Working with 4x5 (inch) black and
white film, Jaffe’s early work was made by printing
from a negative created from the original positive
print. Later, she began scanning the 4x5 negatives
and reversing the tones digitally in Photoshop.
Although black and white, her photographs are
printed in color, which produces images with a rich
tonal scale and increased depth.
The Heckscher Museum of Art
This illustrated checklist for the exhibition Modern
2 Prime Avenue
Alchemy: Experiments in Photography is to be used for
Huntington, NY 11743
631.351.3250 educational purposes in coordination with the high
www.heckscher.org school student exhibition Long Island’s Best: Young

Artists at The Heckscher Museum 2015.
Education Department
631.351.3214