Of Earth and Heaven


  • Photographer
    Thomas Brummett
  • Prize
    Honorable Mention
  • Company/Studios
    Studio-4a llc
  • Date of Photograph
    2013
  • Technical Info
    pigment prints 30x40" +

This series I call "The Infinities" is from an exhibition I had in 2014 titled "Of Earth and Heaven". It is the culmination of 30 years of my explorations of Nature and my interests in the idea of a personal "Cabinet of Wonder" as well as mining the areas between photography and mark making using the silver metals in black and white photo paper. This series is divided between earth images and images of the heavens. All united by my analog, unique silver prints I call "Light Projections" which have never been done in the history of photography to my knowledge (The majority of my works are "one of a kind" silver prints). The web is an impossible place to view large, highly detail images that are made to stand in front of to experience them. Since your viewing process does not consider "details" I would recommend this excellent 5 min gallery video on the making of the series here: http://youtu.be/Khx2ItTwaTA or go to my web site at www.studio-4a.com.

Story

This new series of photographic abstractions are part of a life-long 30 year project titled, "Rethinking The Natural", which now consists of 7 bodies of work.

This series of photographs are about the Infinite and especially what it means to me personally. There have always been elements of abstraction in my work but this time I have combined multiple components such as mold grown in my studio, stars downloaded from robot cameras in space, snowflakes captured on a winter’s night, magnolia trees blooming in spring and unique camera-less Light Projections which I devised for this project (and are at the heart of these images).

All of my work is about process, looking at things very closely, the marks I can generate with the silver metals in black and white photo paper and especially exploring the spaces between photography and mark making. My work has had a great deal to do with manipulating the photographic surface and this series is just an extension of that exploration as well as my attempt at thinking about the Infinite.

I don’t take photographs I make them. I am very interested the concept of a personal “Cabinet of Wonder” as well as the marks I can make in the darkroom using an entropic process I have developed over the years. I’m equally interested in the ideas I can generate and the ensuing questions I can bring to the medium of photography, its history and language. For, above all, photography is a language and I believe it’s a medium that is still in its infancy yet moving forward at a very rapid rate.

If there is a rule that defines what a photograph is today it is simply that there are no more rules. The question today is just what constitutes a photograph in 2014? If every mark in a photograph is made by hand with a camera, lens and light sensitive materials processed in the darkroom combined with digital capture, yet it seems more a drawing than anything else, then what kind of photograph is it?

Abstraction, Photographic Document or Dream?

On a good day my images are all three.

Thomas Brummett / 2014



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