Portfolio

Christophe Dillinger; Elizabeth Huston; Mareva Nardeli; Tod Kapke; Nina Sparrek

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Interview
Mitchell Hartman

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It starts with an idea...

One could rightfully contend that every image starts with an idea, but for the photo-based artists featured in this issue of PH, every detail is very deliberate. Blurring the lines between photography, illustration, collage, painting, and virtually every other medium, these artists express a reality all their own, from the whimsical to the surreal to the bizarre. But every element is in place in service of the idea. As you explore this issue, take the time to soak in all these details, the visual references, and the dramatic combinations and juxtapositions that tell the stories that might not be possible with straight photography. Perhaps these works will inspire some ideas of your own. Another inspired idea would be to make a small donation to help us continue to present new artists and ideas for you in the months ahead. We encourage you to share PH with your friends and social networks, and we intend to keep it a free publication. But if you like what you see, we ask that click the donate button on the back cover and chip in to help keep PH moving forward. What a great idea! Gary Mitchell Co-editor
Cover Photo by Elizabeth Huston

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Christophe Dillinger Elizabeth Huston Mitchell Hartman Tod Kapke Nina Sparrek Mareva Nardelli

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PH Magazine 2012 Jandak Photography, All Rights Reserved. Image copyrights remain with the respective photographers. Images used by permission. editor: Patrik Jandak co-editor: Rodrigo Bressane co-editor: Gary Mitchell design: art_photo Contact: / Editorial: editor@phmag.ca / Advertising: info@phmag.ca phone: +1 905-581-4980 / www.phmag.ca / www.facebook.com/phmagazineonline

Interview

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ISSN: 1924-9424 Toronto, ON, Canada 2012

CONTENTS

Christophe Dillinger
I am mainly a photographer with two practices in this field. One is based on pre-production of films using traditional mark-making techniques (the Swirls series), and the other is typing on negatives with a second-hand typewriter (the Typewriter series). Both series investigate the relevance of faithful representation of the real in photography, and the attempt to bring the invisible onto the image. My work is entirely film-based and is not modified digitally (I practice WYSIWIGOTN photography, which stands for What You See Is What I Got On The Negative). I also work with other alternative techniques, such as cutting and pasting negatives together and scanning negatives and acetate cut-outs together. I am currently branching out and trying to redefine part of the concepts of photographic production, working on creating photographic apparatus/objects that focus on mark-making, interactivity and the moment. I am now also working with sound installations, text and web-based work and sculpture. http://www.cdillinger.co.uk

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Eliazbeth Huston
I am fascinated with the way memory influences how stories change and evolve over time. This happens not because the facts change, but because the inner orientation of the storyteller has. Their perspective grows, expanding and contracting with experience. The storyteller journeys us deep into the timeless aspects of the human experience; the kingdoms of love and loss, through a myriad of emotions. Through grief, resolve, growth and into the balance of purpose. The human form, quite often a female form, is the storyteller within my art. She comes to us in the nude, like a baby, with nothing to hide: her full power and breadth still intact. We see her as metaphor, as paradox embodied. She has the power of flight, yet chooses to walk. She has the ability to swim in great depths, yet allows herself to be captured and tamed. She teaches us, she moves through us, and yet, she does not belong to us. She is composed of images from the past and the present, and thus inhabits multiple worlds at once. This time traveler, this storyteller, unites the threads of timeleading us home, bringing us back into ourselves. It is perhaps, my own longing for home, this place I cannot touch, a nostalgic view of the past and the future romanticized, that is the foundation of my art. About the Artist Liz Huston of Venice, California, taught herself the craft of photography more than 18 years ago. She has been a professional photographer nearly as long, shooting commercially as well as showing in the fine art world. Over the years she has had three books of her photography published, with a fourth currently in the works. Always seeking new ways to express her dreamy inner landscape, Liz grew into digital assemblage, or photomontage. As she refined her vision and skills with this emerging digital platform, she discovered a deep sense of purpose expressed. It is with photomontage where Liz truly excels; crafting her personal vision into fantastical new scenes using the nostalgia of antique images as a spring-board. She regularly exhibits this work in Los Angeles and around the country. http://photomonium.net/

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Mitchell Hartman Interview

PH Mitchell, do you remember your first experience with photography? MH my father, who was a scientist, had always played with art, painting, sculpting and photography in the 60 and 70she gave me my first camera. He felt the arts were very important, so when I dropped out of college after my first year of majoring in biology, he pushed me into going back and study art. So, I enrolled at SVA (School of Visual Arts) in New York. PH Do you think that your dad wanted you to get some education or did he felt you have potential to do well in arts instead of biology? MH He and my mother wanted me to get an education. SVA had just started their BFA program at the time, so I entered their illustration/cartooning department. I didnt get into photography until after I graduated. My first job was as a retoucher for advertising. Back when I started, we did retouching by hand on prints as it was the end of the Mad Men era. PH Do you remember what did you photographed with your first camera? MH Yes, I photograph my girlfriend while I was still at SVA for an class assignment. My first camera was an Exakta RTL1000, you have to remember this was 1974 or so. PH is there anything you learned in school from illustration courses that you could apply to photography? MH all my photographs are illustrative, they all tell you a story, a what if... and that continues today with my digital composing; some galleries tend to say my work can be too commercial. PH you said you did not get into photography until after graduation, and even then started as a retoucher. This sounds very interesting. Who did you retouch for? MH I should have mentioned before I had a very unique experience learning photography. Since I studied illustration and went into retouching, it was one of the retouchers that took me under his wing, so to speak, and asked if I wanted to learn photography. He met with four press photographers each Saturday on what was then called Camera Row in NYC, where they would give me a lens, some photo paper or formula to experiment with and come back the following week, and they would critique my work. This went on for 3 years before I went out and really started taking my own photos. By then I was doing street photography with a Contax IIIa rangefinder. Getting back to your question, I worked for a small retouching studio which had major advertising agency accounts, Minolta being one of them. At that time Irving Penn was doing their ads for them, so I got to study his work and retouch his images. PH you had not only this great learning experience of meeting and being critiqued by photographers but also working on prints of some of the worlds best photographers like Irving Penn. I am sure it was an excellent opportunity to study each print from very close. MH Yes, I was very lucky. PH How important was this for you, and I dont mean only financially? MH Very, because back in those days, we used to get negatives in-house and we did the B&W printing, so as a retoucher I was exposed to so very much. The darkroom techs taught me about getting everything out of the negatives, so that every detail was visible when printed on commercial printing presses. PH Did you got a chance to meet any photographer in person and talk to them about their work?
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MH I got to meet some of the photographers that were doing commercial work like Scavullo, who was doing many of the Vanity Fair/Cond Nast covers. I also had the chance to meet Richard Avedon, but it was not like today where photographers and retouchers work side-by-side on images. Back then it was rare for a retoucher to meet any photographers. Retouching was a hidden art, nobody wanted to admit it was being done. Funny, because every photographer had his work retouched. PH Since you started, a lot has changed in the retouching industry. If you could compare, is it better now or then? MH Photoshop has changed a lot of what was a then a secret art. When I started, nobody wanted to know that their artwork was retouched, and the retouchers were very secretive about how they did their jobs. Remember, we worked on prints so we worked with chemicals. Our knowledge base was how chemicals reacted differently with color and B&W prints. Now its all done by computer. PH So there is a need for you to constantly be learning and improving your skills? MH The tools keep changing, so I keep learning, which is now the fun part of the business for me. I still have to do the same job. I started with Photoshop when it was version 1.7 or 2.0, then 2.5. I think its actually more difficult now to do good retouching, but the retouching is now better than it was. PH Why would you say that? Is retouching more difficult because there are higher demands on what needs to be done? MH I think what is expected a higher level now. Before you could fake a texture, now people want to see texture. Add to this that people know they can change their minds, so I have to know how to make brown eyes blue or green and make it look real. There is more of an emphasis on realism; before retouching was about making images print well. PH How does the quality of images compare? MH the image quality in advertising is worse nowadays, but thats because of the business. As far as cameras today, I will say digital is a whole lot better than film as far as detail, but if we are talking fine art, the aesthetics of film is more pleasing to most people. PH Interesting. Why do you think it is that even though we have better equipment, the images are not better than before? MH I said they are not better in advertisements, that is because of the business of advertising. They buy stock, and sometimes not good stock photos. Before, most advertising photography was acquired through specifically taking pictures for the assignment. Now, they try to find a stock photo that fits the idea and try to make it work. PH I see, so its not that we dont have good images, but maybe theres no money to pay for it? MH People figure they can fix everything in post production, or they dont want to spend the money on good pictures, so it is up to the retouchers to make it look good. PH Now I understand what you mean its harder today than it was before. So where does taking pictures and creating your own artwork fit in to your busy schedule? MH Well at this point in my life, Ive created a wonderful situation for myself. I have a guaranteed three days a week of work for advertising, and the rest of the time is for my own art. This is very flexible so if advertising needs more days Im there, but if my own artwork demands more time, they are flexible as well. I pursued photography at an amateur level until five years ago when I entered the fine art field. Now Im showing in galleries, entering contests, going to portfolio reviews, networking on social media and meeting people. Ive met wonderful people, especially on Facebook, that have helped me progress my fine art work.

PH From your start of taking pictures of your girlfriend and doing street photography, you move to creating surrealistic images. What is it about imagining that interests you the most? After all, one would think since you manipulate images for living you might want to stick to more realistic photography? MH I did straight photography for a long time. I have several websites, one is just B&W straight photography (www.mitchellny.com), but I have always been a surrealist. I grew up in the late 60s, early 70s in the psychedelic era, so surrealism was a big thing to me. Im always asking what iflike what if the taxis were really sharks swimming up the street, they do look that way to me. Or what if we viewed people at two different views and put them together, like what I am doing now. I love to experiment, I love to explore something that couldnt happen and then make it happen. Sure I retouch for a living but for my own art and myself, I take photographs and retouch them in my own way, creating my own stories.

PH So you would agree with Elliot Erwitt when he said, a photographer needs to have a curious nature? MH I think all photographers are curious by nature... they are voyeurs. They are capturing a moment in time. PH After all, photography is always new sub-reality of a real moment. But once we make all the decisions and press the button, we do create something new. So why not to extend it to next level and manipulate it even more? MH Exactly. There are a lot of wonderful people pushing photography past the documentation stage, giving photography its isms. Thats not to say it is easy; its hard pushing a medium forward. There are wonderful people like Ellen Jantzen, Karen Divine, Tami Bone, Fran Foreman, and Carolyn Hampton, just to mention a few, who are pushing the medium forward. They are creating amazing work.
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PH For you as an artist, do you feel digital technology has helped photographers to move forward? MH Yes, of course, digital photography helped a lot. Photoshop made it easier to make changes, experiment, not commit until I solved all my problems. PH But dont you think that many people are just following some patterns that have been created and worked for some? What I mean is that here and there somebody new and creative come up with something great and before we know it its all over and everybodys doing it? MH Those are phases and they fade quickly. I remember when Kais Power Tools was all the rage, you saw curled paper edges all over the place, but after a while it disappeared. Real art comes to the head. Phases fade. In commercial art we call them gimmicks.

PH There are phases and they might fade away but dont you have a feeling that those want-to-be people are ruining the whole business? MH Gimmicks and style are two different things. Are they ruining commercial art or aine art? Imitation fades because it has no substance. If you work out something and it truly works, then its not a fad. And since you have the solution nobody can imitate it. Thats true in any art form. It might look like yours but its not, and doesnt have the same feel. PH Are you sure that nobody can imitate new things? Look around. Dont you have a feeling that there are a few styles that are in and everybodys copying them? MH They are imitations, but do they really work? They are slightly off, because they havent solved the problem. When you create a piece of art, there is a problem you have to solve. When you solve it, you

have created art; if you dont, you continue until you do. Kodak made photography easy for the public. Adobe made retouching easier, but real art will always survive. PH So true!! OK, lets get back to your art, besides curiosity, what inspire you? MH Pushing myself. I dont think Ive created good art yet, so Im pushing to get to that point, always pushing. I tend to throw out a lot, because I dont think its there yet. I think my newest work is starting to get there. But if you are asking about my heroes, Id have to first say the artists of Dada and Surrealism, artists like Miro, DeChirico, Magritte, Chagall. I am also inspired by the photo-surrealists, such as Jerry Uelsmann and Duane Michaels. Thats not to say that pictorial photographers dont also inspire me. PH What about getting a second opinion instead of throwing something out?

MH - Do those opinions really matter? Its like being on Facebookeveryone likes your work, but do they really? PH To some level they do. MH Do galleries or portfolio reviews really matter? Sure if you care about sales, but we are talking making art. The only one that knows if my art is worthwhile is me. Im not trying to be egotistical, but its just that I am making it, nobody else. PH But if no one else ever sees it, its almost like it doesnt exist, isnt it? MH Well, lets look at Vivian Maier. Nobody saw her art, but she was satisfied by the act of just doing it. PH - Great example. Years ago nobody saw her work, now everybodys going wild about it. People have to see your art to appreciate it. MH its actually a shame. The art was for her,
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hopefully it wasnt that she was turned down by a lot of galleries and she just quit doing it for others. If that happened, nobody will ever know.
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PH When you showed your work to galleries, what was their first reaction? MH Well it all depends on the gallery. Some photography galleries dont show anything but straight photography, those would be ones I would avoid. The newer photography galleries are more and more accepting of my kind of photography, which I call photo-based art. As one of my friends who owns a very prestigious gallery in California always tell me, you have to do your homework, which means research is very important. But I will say the initial reaction used to be that my work was too commercial, whatever that really means. I still dont quite understand that word. PH Do you think we are getting to the stage where images/prints needs to be manipulated to be appreciated, or is there still some interest in straight photography? MH Well Patrik, what people dont understand is that every photograph is manipulated. Once we capture the image, the negative or RAW file gets interpreted by the photographer this is really manipulation. The worst culprit of all was Ansel Adams when he devised his zone system. He was expanding or compressing tonalities by using either shorter or longer developing times or by other

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methods. Burning and dodging is another form of manipulation where you are darkening or lightening an image to express your artistic senses. But if you are asking if every photograph has to be composited? Then I would have to say no. There are some wonderful photographers taking what most people call straight photographs, some of them very exciting images. Many fine art photographers are still shooting film, and dont feel that digital cameras give them the aesthetics they want in their images, and I find some of their work exciting as well. If you look at the work of Susan Burnstine, she builds her own cameras and shoots film, but the lenses and the way she builds the camera distorts the image, now my question is: Is this straight photography or manipulated? What is happening in 2012 is that we have really exciting times in photography. People are expanding the art form, some are taking straight pictures, some are compositing images, some are blurring reality and some are using iPhones to capture the image, but its all working and its all photography. And with the explosion for the Internet its all getting seen and others are adding to the exploration. These are truly wonderful times.

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The photographer, known simply as Mitchell, was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1953. He holds a BFA degree from the School of Visual Arts in cartoon-illustration. After graduation, his first job was as a commercial retoucher working in advertising, and on the photographs of Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, among others. Mitchell benefitted from on the job training, and was mentored by one of his fellow retouchers, who introduced him to the world of film, chemicals and paper. Every Saturday, for two years, they would meet with four other press photographers on what was commonly known as New York Citys Camera Row. mitchell learned about lenses, and what chemical formulas brought out the best qualities in film and paper, and worked in various formats35mm and larger. Through the constant study of the images presented to him for retouching, he emulated those techniques, and honed his craft through his understanding of the final print. Known for his innovative use of combining images through his retouching and darkroom skills, it wasnt until 1997 when mitchell got his first taste of Photoshop and its capabilities. Quickly adapting to digital work, he became an early proponent of Photoshop, increasing his knowledge through the online AOL forum taught by digital guru, Kai Krauss. His present method is to combine old technology with new. Continuing in the black and white tradition, he now produces his work digitally, from image capture to the creation of quadratone digital pigment prints. http://www.mstudiosny.com/

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Tod Kapke
I was born in the 70s close to the exact center of the USA. Back when I was knee high to a grasshopper, I was obsessed with vintage cartoons from the golden age. I then discovered comics (and the Industrial LIght & Magic effects book), especially comics like RAW (a light went on, something different is going on here). I picked up photography in high school. I had been serious about art since junior high school, taking everything I could do from printmaking to painting and sculpture. I came across work by the likes of Joel-Peter Witkin, Meatyard, Cindy Sherman and a commercial photography magazine that had an article about a photo/illustrator named Matt Mahurin. This all really clicked with me. I had no real interest in taking pictures, I only wanted to make pictures. The idea was combining everything I had interest in with one medium. I love being able to build models, sets, costumes to create my work. I use really anything I can to get the feel I am looking for: large format, toy cameras, digital, cell phone, Gameboy camera, TtV. I think I love the process more than creating the actual work. All the work I do is an on-going experiment. I never really know fully if what I have planned is actually going to work out. I just deal with it and add whatever happened to the arsenal of future ideas. http://www.tkopix.com/

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Nina Sparrek
I was born in 1980. My photographic journey began few years ago with nature photography. I always tried to find some unusual shape or pattern in even the most conventional scenes. Back then I had no idea that manipulating images can be so interesting or something that is ok to do. After a while I started taking pictures of people and from there it was only a small step to what I love to do now. My passion lies in photography and digital art. I love to alter my images to the point where they look nothing like they did in camera but do match my vision. Im mostly inspired by the events of my own life and sometimes by literature. Im in the beginning of my journey of creative image making and I hope to say, someday, that I make believable images of unbelievable situations. http://www.flickr.com/photos/sparrek/

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Mareva Nardelli
I was born in France, and have been living in Iceland for the past 4 years. Here my passion for photography has grown bigger and bigger. A self-taught photographer, I am mostly interested in fine art portraiture, where I dont restrict myself to reproduce what the eye can see but try to show others what I see in my daydreams. http://www.flickr.com/photos/gordajarra/

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published by: jandak photography