Matthew Gamber’s series, This is
(Still) the Golden Age, is a unique set of images created by pressing a
piece of photographic paper to the screen of a cathode-ray television. The TV
provides both the light source and the subject (a program or commercial)
projected directly onto the photographic paper. The resulting still images are
somewhat abstract–as the moving images are rendered into blurry shapes–yet
still recognizable. He writes about the process and his inspiration in this
interview with Lauren Szumita, Curatorial Assistant of Prints, Drawings, and
Photographs.
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| Matthew Gamber, Leave it to Beaver, from This is (Still) the Golden Age, 2006, gelatin silver print, (c) Matthew Gamber |
LS: To start, how did you come to be connected
with Worcester?
MG: I have been
teaching at College of the Holy Cross since 2014, having taught at the school
once before in 2008. In the time between those two appointments, I met many
artists in the area, many of whom have become close friends and colleagues.
LS: We are excited to
feature works from your series This is
(Still) the Golden Age at WAM. Can you explain more about the process of
creating this series?
MG: I wanted to create
an image where the light was both the subject and the object. I began by thinking about the
crossover between broadcast media and photography. On a primary level,
photographs record the absence or presence of light. As contact prints (or photograms), these
are a direct index of an object, but they also have the artist’s desire to have touched, which is an
artistic gesture. What
one sees is the recent absence of the object touching the light-sensitive
surface–its residual shadow. The
television image, the electronic image, its transmission exist in a continuum
within the larger electromagnetic spectrum of which visible light is a small
fraction.
LS: The images in this series date to the
mid-2000s, but many of the featured programs, like The Brady Bunch, are much
older. Were these developed from previous negatives, or were these re-runs that
you caught on TV?
MG: Sports
broadcasts, like Wimbledon, were
captured at the time of the initial broadcast as if it were a decisive moment. However, several were reruns. Many postwar
sitcoms, in particular, exist because they were first shot on film and then
edited before broadcast. Our access to these programs could have only happened
through A) the foresight of properly archiving the episodes and B) networks
discovering an audience for resyndicated content. These shows replay
continuously, and if one hasn't seen them, they can be rediscovered by a new
generation. I am experiencing the episodes as my parents' generation might have
first encountered them. When I made these cameraless negatives from the
television, to me, it was as if they were broadcast for the first time.
LS: Since you
captured the image by turning the television on, not sitting and waiting for a
certain shot, did
you have an idea of what the final product would look like?
MG: Before the
widespread use of magnetic recording, which could transduce signals and could
be replayed in the future, early television programs were broadcast into the
atmosphere and lost—essentially live theatre seen at a distance. My technique
requires that the television unit be in a completely darkened room. I am unsure
of what the image will be when it comes up to full brightness on the cathode ray
tube. This series was created from a long series of failures. For me, it was a
discovery about what photography's shortcomings were in its ability to create a
meaningful document of something in our everyday experience.
LS: I think one of
the most exciting things about this work is that it's a type of cameraless photography.
Can you comment on your practice?
MG: For me, it is
the mistakes at the seams of intent that generate meaning in the artwork. I was
interested in using photography for purposes for which it was not intended to
be used. I tried to bring 19th-century thinking to bear on the 21st-century
as a way to understand these what might be considered common uses of
photography. In a sense, I wanted to create a kind of alternate history where
Anna Atkins had tried to collect television broadcasts, rather than the wide
variety of British flora. I wanted to imagine what it might have been like if
one had skipped over the rise of Kodak and the development of what we know as
photojournalism, cinema, or the vernacular.
LS: You seem to have
this interest, in this series and others, in isolating different aspects of
photography and exploring them a little bit further, maybe breaking down the
value systems.
MG: Which came
first: an idea or a
technique? I'm not challenging any traditions of photography insomuch as I’m
trying to understand why images are made the way are. I'm fascinated with the
evolution of photographic conventions, whether intentional or entirely
accidental. I'm interested in challenging rules we accept as a means to
understand how conventions began.
LS: Is there anything
that you hope viewers will take away from your work?
MG: I hope that
viewers will make a connection between the photographs in the Photo Revolution exhibition. I was
inspired by many of the artists whose work is in the show. I hope visitors see
a shared dialogue in reevaluating what photography can show us. In the 1960s and
‘70s (in parallel development with MFA programs in academia), you find a number
of young artists mining photography's past, challenging conventional uses of
the medium. It was a means to explore aspects of lived experience that are not
easily documented through a lens.
Works from This
is (Still) the Golden Age will be on
display in WAM’s Sidney and Rosalie Rose Gallery until March 29, 2020.
— Lauren Szumita
Curatorial Assistant of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs
December 10, 2019
