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Artist Exhibitions:
Coming Soon!
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Artist Galleries:
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Artist Reviews:
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Collections:
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Commissions:
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Artist Statement for James Putnam Abbott
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I am a printmaker, not a photographer in the traditional sense. Some of my tools are still a photographer's tools, but my work is not presented on photographic paper, has never visited a wet darkroom, and rarely represents an effort to record reality. Thus, it is not accurate to refer to my creative output as photographs. Because I don't make "photographs" any longer, I need a new job description!
I make digital prints, using archival pigment-based inks. I print my work in limited editions on fine, richly textured art papers, specially selected for their ability to present each image consistent with my vision and to hold it for generations, probably longer than most photographs. In my creative workflow, I use my Minolta and Nikon cameras (digital and film), my Minolta and Epson film and flatbed scanners, my Mac and my Epson 2200 printer in a process of creation in which I envision, I record, I compose, I assemble, I modify and enhance, and I print with Epson "Ultrachrome" pigment inks.
The truth is, I never was a photographer "in the traditional sense." My work with my camera and in the darkroom often strained or broke the rules, and before the digital revolution I repeatedly employed techniques that were aimed at making my "photographic" images look more painterly, and, quite frankly, if they looked less like photographs that was fine with me. I admire many fine art photographers, and many of them have influenced my work significantly, but I have always striven to create work that is rougher than most admired photographs, and that represents my suggestion, or subjective impression, of reality, not an attempt at representing it "accurately."
When working with my camera, I used the fastest color and black and white films I could find and then "pushed" the development in order to create huge clunks of grain on the emulsion that would later build my images with detail similar to that found in a pointilist painting. I wanted a result that made the viewer think of Georges Seurat, and not, with all due respect, Ansel Adams. I shot with "recording film," Kodalith, Polaroid, and Polaroid positive color and black and white films, and I recorded images of my own images projected on skin. The work of Man Ray inspired me directly, perhaps because there was no rule that he was not willing to break.
When I worked in my wet darkrooms I used a combination of enlarger settings, papers, filters and chemicals (as well as an array of mysterious hand gyrations in the projected light). With these tools I resized, I cropped, I dodged and I burned, I adjusted for contrast and sharpness, and I adjusted to achieve better tonal values. I solarized, and I created montages and collages. I experimented with all kinds of image transfer processes, so that I could finish with a image on the heavy textured "art" papers that I liked so much more that photographic papers. In short, I used every tool I could master, or device I could learn, to make the images distinctively mine.
And now...
I have digitally scanned virtually all of my best film images, and I no longer work on any image outside of in my digital workspace. In this space I make all of the same kind of adjustments that I used to make in the wet lab, using new artists' tools and resources (like Photoshop and some plug-ins) to fine tune or dramatically alter my images. I do all this with the same motivation I had in the wet darkroom, with the same motivation that any artist has to master his or her tools and media -- so that I can present images that come as close as possible to my vision.
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