John Deamond / Full Artist Statement

Reclaiming Space: Full Artist Statement

Introduction

Everyone appropriates space. Maybe you have moved some chairs to create an intimate place for you and a friend, maybe just worn the grass in front of a secluded park bench. Whether it’s the construction of an altar off your property or simply the movement of a few rocks for a more comfortable seat, you have changed the order of things to better suit you.

I am interested in how humans interact with architecture, in the visual histories of appropriated spaces: the celebration and commemoration of an organic past where the important parts remain but details mutate to fit what we currently need. Through my photography, I apply this idea to historic buildings in Baltimore. These are places whose stories have been passed down to me from my parents, friends, and relatives as part of an oral history. They are also part of my physical past: I have been to these places, they are in my memory as well as my blood. I focus primarily on historic spaces because they have seen such heavy use, and because that use is a way of integrating our histories into our present lives. These places are part of the cultural memory of Baltimore, a memory that I hope to access through my subject matter, methods of photography, and the viewers’ experience of an installation.

An individual space, very simply, is any space altered visibly by a person to suit her wants or needs. It is not necessarily private; it can be anywhere from the middle of a field to a secluded corner, made for a single person or a group. An individual space is usually recognized as such, and it is treated (respected or purposefully disrespected) accordingly.

My focus is on historic architecture because it is perfect for observing the differences between individual use of space and public use of space. The buildings depicted are all part of the historical understanding of those living in Baltimore. These are places around which patchworks of stories have grown, places that continued usage has nearly brought to life. Many historic spaces have outlived their original usage, and the institution must deal with their possible evolutions much as the individual does. For example, the Broadway municipal pier in Fells Point was originally a dock and garage for city vehicles. It stood abandoned after a new municipal pier was built, until it was later used for dances and other community functions, which eventually lost funding. It has stood abandoned for years, and is now to be destroyed to make way for upscale condominiums. This public use of the architectural space can be seen in the adaptations individuals have made to create their own spaces: in a publicly reused space one can rearrange chairs and find space for personal items, but only in an abandoned space can one totally repaint a room. Comparing individual and public methods of coping can indicate the differences between these two sides of society.

How we deal with the physical expression of history and memories, both individual and cultural, reveals our psychological health in relation to these issues. When humans die, we (the living) use different coping strategies, both healthy and unhealthy, to adapt to that death (Davis 138). These methods signal what our minds are doing with the memories that surround the deceased. Similarly, when a building outlives its original usage, there are various methods of dealing with its passing. Individuals tend toward the reuse of a building, keeping the original architecture but building on it and altering it to fit their needs. In this way, the past is kept alive and integrated into the present; memory becomes a constantly evolving thing, adapting to our needs as they change.

Previous Works

I began the steps that led up to Reclaiming Space by exploring memory and our methods of accessing our pasts. This endeavor started a year and a half ago in Still Life with Lantern when I limiting myself to archaic and alternative photographic processes while working on a project. The resulting images were ghostly, imprecise portraits that seemed as relics from a distant past, though everyone in the images was present at the exhibition. The photographs were set up in installation in a way that seemed to tell some sort of archetypal story, something familiar and ancient. The viewer had to stand in a tight space surrounded by the images in the dark, and view them by the light of a hand-held oil lantern. My next project in that vein was a photographic series entitled The Middle Passage, where a thirteen year old was shown trying to fit himself in to a grown-up world. He constructed imaginary living areas, like a suburban backyard, out of trash he found in a dump. The constructions were placed in clearings of a trash heap and among the stones of a leveled cemetery. This depicted an adolescent tapping into a cultural memory of adulthood and enacting it in the only way he knew how: the games he learned as a child. My third project, (All that's Past) Between, was a photographic installation: an altar-inspired piece based around three main portraits. The people depicted interacted with places that were part of their cultural heritage, but that they had never encountered. These places were all abandoned and slowly being destroyed; the people were young and trying to access memories that they had never known. The places communicated through the people, the altar became an homage to their childhoods left behind as well as the places they never knew.

Last semester, I left the issue of memory behind to address social issues, matters of free speech and bringing together community. I had decided that my art (not all art) had to be about something real and tangible, something that’s not just pretty, but at the same time appeals to the general population. I struggled with my message, in the end creating a somewhat confused statement about freedom of expression. My goal was reached in a sense, in that my projects were physically successful: they drew a substantial number of participants, who had fun, interacted, and understood what was being conveyed. I, along with others in the show, successfully altered the gallery space enough that people who were usually uncomfortable in art galleries felt at home. In addition, I successfully questioned my usual way of working (photographic installation), which strengthened my understanding of my usual methods and the others available. I received mixed feedback however, most of which told me that I needed a more specific message and direction to my work. Also, I had deviated substantially from photography, which has long been my primary means of self-expression. In this deviation, I not only lost the communication of emotion to others – I lost much of my own emotional attachment to my work. I undertook too much in unfamiliar territory, working on two projects at once: in my zeal to create community actions, I ended up secluding myself instead of interacting with my community. I also had trouble with the sort of language I needed to use; too often I took the radical voice of my immediate community, immediately estranging the majority of my audience as well as the intellectual art community. My radical voice, combined with my ideas, did have a certain amount of success. Stating my opinion so blatantly allowed others to feel free to express theirs, resulting in a dialogue based around freedom of expression and the use of space. When the semester was over, I decided that I had to get back to what I know. My photography has always had a very human quality, and that seemed like the best way to interact with people. I had tried too much to blend my ideas with a group identity, both creating a muddled mess and destroying the feeling that my work usually has.

I originally was concerned with the different buildings that I was photographing as specific, differentiated entities. I had planned to present them as such, including little histories that explained the evolution of the buildings and surrounding architecture. Since I was using places from within my cultural consciousness and real experience, each held an importance for me both through family history and my own life. In my mind, I saw the old tuberculosis asylum where my great aunt died, the arboretum where I went with my girlfriend after my return from a long trip, and the recreational where my parents spent many a night, as places whose individual personalities had to be expressed. On further exploration, however, I realized that I did not desire a feeling of specificity, but a feeling that all places undergo the same sort of processes. This led me to remove any sort of classification and allow the images’ similarities and differences speak for themselves.

Photography

I convey my ideas through photography because it is something anyone can understand and identify with. The artist-activist Sandra de la Loza refers to photography as a democratic means for artmaking, as it is accessible to many and is what people use to depict themselves (Flores Sternad 1). Everyone takes pictures, which allows them to create a personal attachment to the photography of others. Though my photography could be categorized as “fine art,” people still readily recognize the link to the photographic art and records that they create. I use different development techniques to help express my ideas because I believe in working with anything available instead of being restricted by standard procedures. This also adds more steps to the process, allowing me more room for artistic interpretation in each photograph. Though I often stray from standard printing techniques, I feel that this should not be an automatic reflex. This sort of deviation has been occurring for so long that it is accepted; there is no longer any real rebellion in printing technique, only options. Like Robert Frank and William Christenberry, I work in series because I believe that a photograph should not stand alone as a final idea; our thought processes are much too complicated to fit in a single photograph.

I printed my images of individual spaces in what is considered standard fine art quality: they are rendered sharply with a realistic tonal gradation, and printed at 14”x20”. This allows the viewer to access the images as spaces instead of simply surfaces. These photographs also hold an intimate quality because they are small enough to fit comfortably in one’s grasp. I toned the images in subtle warm browns and greens to imbue them with a feeling of comfort. The earthy aged nature of these prints lends a feeling of familiarity, as though you already know the places or the images. I presented my final prints in individual photo albums, where one person views one print from close up, to enhance their intimacy.

I have long found inspiration in the photography of Robert Frank formally and conceptually. Since I am aware of many alternate methods of photography, I often stray from standard forms. Similarly, Robert Frank rebelled against his contemporaries not by rejecting any part of what photography is, but by embracing its characteristics: grain, blur, and the uncontrollable elements of development (Livingston 305). I also admire his lack of condescension or negative feeling toward his subjects (Beardsley 362). Instead of pointing an accusing finger, he simply records his view of society, as if to say, “look at this” and nothing else. His opinion becomes apparent in where he points the viewfinder and how he takes and prints the photos, altering things to bring out their similarities and differences. We are guided in certain ways, but left to draw our own conclusions. Similarly, my images direct the viewer to consider the concept of individual appropriation of space without making any accusations or forcing my ideals onto the viewer. My opinion becomes apparent, but I do not demand that the viewer should feel the same. Frank manages to tap into the democracy (or is it socialism?) of photography: his are pictures of all of us (Ruscha 1). Much like my own work, his photographs are about recollection and memory. However, I focus on the interaction between people and places and the exploration of quintessential space where Frank dealt with the interaction between people and their time and the quintessential moment. Additionally, I incorporate people through the audience’s interaction with an installation, where Frank puts people directly into his images. Frank’s images have become icons of our collective memory, effectively blurring the line between photography, memory, and knowledge (Van Reis 6). I have made it one of my goals to capture something of this cultural memory, the feeling that we already know these images. I strive for that sense – not of timelessness, as Frank’s pictures are very specific temporally – but of some sort of social timefulness, one that we all know.

Portraiture

My series of photographs is, in essence, a collection of portraits. Architecture comes slowly alive through continued human use and alteration. Each building becomes more than a space of predetermined usage. Every individual that lingers and leaves part of herself breathes more life into the structure; every story told about the building brings it more character.

I have chosen to eliminate people from my photographs to make them more personal for the viewer and highlight the living nature of the space. Since the spaces depicted are often meant for an individual (or, at most, two or three), I wanted the viewer to come upon them as one would in life, individually, instead of feeling as if they were interrupting something. Including a person in an image allows the viewer to identify, sympathize, or empathize with that person, or even enter into the image with that person. However, the photograph centers around the person depicted; the viewer cannot explore it on her own terms. The space within the photograph can never be truly hers.

The presence of people in an image also locates it in time. I wanted a non-specific temporality in my photographs, in order to convey that reclaiming space is neither a new nor a dead phenomenon. Additionally, the inclusion of people in an image can easily make it voyeuristic, where I was attempting to make the viewer comfortable in the spaces they encounter.

I came across William Christenberry, an Alabama photographer, accidentally while doing a Google search for disappearing places. I found a very direct connection between my current project and his photography of Southern architecture. Much as I want to show the physicality of our way of dealing with history, he deals with the physicality of southern culture’s disintegration (Seidel 1). I was aiming toward using portraiture as a visual style while developing this project, but I was struggling with the animation of a place without including people. I found inspiration to surmount this problem in Christenberry and his portraits of the American South. He has captured the emotion of a place and given it life without including people in the scene. I also identified with his ideas about the interconnection of a person to the place that they are from (Ogden 1), which made me realize that I tend to focus on Baltimore because it is most familiar to me. I recognized that my concern with the destiny of outmoded architecture is a particular social question in Baltimore, and that my family has involved me in this debate since childhood. The buildings that I worked with are part of an oral history passed down to me from my parents and their friends; the people and the places have all become part of the same thing. Christenberry and I are, however, very different in our methods of presentation. Where he separates his photography and sculptural installation, I combine the two into an experiential piece that still holds the democratic nature of photography. Also, his large color photographs attempt a literal translation of place, while my relatively small black and white prints attempt a more interpretive and subjective approach.

Installation

In order to document the appropriation of space, I had to engage with and become familiar with the places I was photographing. I visited each site multiple times and spent hours exploring their intricacies. There were quite a few places I photographed spontaneously, without understanding why. After developing the images, these often felt the most individual and intimate. I feel that opening myself to the aura of individual spaces gave me a subconscious understanding of them, allowing me to recognize them without comprehending why.

I created my non-gallery installation from April 10th through the 24th, hanging one image a day, each in a different individual space. The images worked as parallels to their exhibition spaces, making the viewer consider the role of these places they inhabit in their own lives. I chose to show my images in individual spaces that I was already familiar with so that I would not disrupt a space that I had no ties to. The images I hung were photo collages made from the test prints of my final images. They described the multi-layered histories of the places depicted through their physical layering. The collages show the human hand in my work as well as the building up process that the photographs undergo. As time passed, they were effected by the weather and softened to become more of a natural part of the space. This mirrors the organic process through which individual spaces simultaneously build and wear. I developed a ritual of every day visiting each of my images and photographing them as they changed. This allowed me to develop a relationship with the spaces while I watched my images do the same.

In the gallery, I presented my work as a collection of photo albums. These were arranged in an installation consisting of a table, chairs, and a shelf. The aged quality of everything in the installation, combined with its lived-in feel, created the illusion of a section of personal living space. The albums underlined the portrait basis of the images, while their presentation in a converted space reiterated the theme of appropriated space. Within the albums, there was a final print and the documentation of its history consisting of when and where I took the picture and its installation on campus. This showed the project’s development as an alteration and development of the original space depicted, much as the original space itself was created.

My installations add an interactive dimension to my work that straight photography cannot accomplish. The individual space transcends the boundaries of the image and spills into the viewer’s personal space. Standing in a reclaimed space gives the viewer a personal connection to the artwork: she understands it through experience as well as observation. With this, the viewer can see that the idea of reclaiming space is not only as old as the images seem, but also as new as the space around her.

My confrontation of people’s understanding of architectural space finds inspiration in the building cuts of Gordon Matta-Clark. He questioned the “whole object” view of architecture, the idea that a building can be viewed for everything it is from one angle (Walker 131). Matta-Clark contorted the building until nothing about it can be understood from a single glance. Similarly, I am documenting the way people alter a space until it becomes a collection of smaller, only tenuously related parts. In both cases, the building becomes an organic thing. The building cuts were also a method of reclaiming space, taking unused architecture and turning it into something positive, appropriating things approaching social exhaustion (Lee xiv). However, Matta-Clark based his work primarily in physically altering spaces, where I am also documenting how that happens naturally. Like my installation, his art was meant to be the beginning of a conversation on architecture and underused space and how it could be used (Walker 132). The installation aspect of my work functions much as Matta-Clark’s building cuts, creating a space that could only be fully realized through the viewers’ interactions (Lee 136).

Conclusion

I have always enjoyed artwork that has a message on which to meditate, but one that I can ignore if I so choose, focusing instead on the experience of the work on its most basic levels. With this in mind, I arranged Reclaiming Space such that it could be read on a number of levels, according to the viewers needs and desires. At a basic level, it can be simply an aesthetic experience. Nothing is made to jar you or grate with your positive visual experience; on the contrary, the images and the space are made to be beautiful and non-offensive. Beyond that, my installation can be seen as a sanctuary of sorts. It is created with comfort and familiarity in mind in order to become the sort of space depicted. This piece could also be seen as a social commentary based around our use of space. The positive aesthetic and physical experience aids in that, inducing people to linger longer and contemplate my work. Finally, Reclaiming Space can be seen as both an observation and a suggestion: the simple idea that this is something people do, and that it is possible for you to do the same.

Works Cited

Beardsley, John. “Biographies.” The New York School: Photographs 1936-1963. pp. 362-363. ed. Jane Livingston. Stewart, Tabori, and Chang. New York: 1992.

Davis, Christopher G. “The Tormented and the Transformed: Understanding Responses to Loss and Trauma.” Meaning Reconstruction and the Experience of Loss. ed. Robert A. Neimeyer. American Psychological Association. Washington, DC: 2001.

Flores Sternad, Jennifer. Interview with Sandra de la Loza. LatinArt.com. Online. Accessed 15 February 2006. Available http://www.hijadela.com/Info/interview/ interview.html.

Lee, Pamela M. Object to Be Destroyed. MIT Press. Cambridge: 2000.
Livingston, Jane. The New York School: Photographs 1936-1963. Stewart, Tabori, and Chang. New York: 1992.

The Ogden Museum of Southern Art. “William Christenberry.” Online. Accessed 13 January 2006. Available http://www.ogdenmuseum.org/exhibitions/featured-artist-christenberry.html.

Ruscha, Ed, Robert Frank, Lou Reed, Liz Jobey, Mary Ellen Mark, Mark Haworth-Booth. “Six Reflections on the photography of Robert Frank.” Tate Etc: Visiting and Revisiting Art, etcetera. Issue 2. Autumn 2004. Online. Accessed 10 January 2006. Available http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue2/ sixreflectionsfrank.htm.

Seidel, Miriam. “William Christenberry.” Art in America. December 1997. Online. Accessed 13 January 2006. Available http://www.miriamseidel.com/samples/ christenberry.html.

Van Reis, Mikael. “That Spot of Light – Robert Frank’s Life Studies.” Flamingo, ed. Robert Frank. SCALO. New York: 1997.

Walker, Stephen. “Gordon Matta-Clark’s Building Dissections.” Architectures: Modernism and After. pp.118-141. Blackwell. Oxford: 2004.