Photographers look beyond the stock image

For nearly 200 years, a photograph has been defined as an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface. More recently, advancing digital technologies have changed that.

But there are a select few photographers who are exploring the materiality of the medium itself — as in paper, silver, screen, ink or pixel — by making the unseen elements of the image the subject of their work in ways that are utterly abstract, yet undeniably beautiful.

“Materials & Processes,” on display at Silver Eye Center for Photography, presents the work of six of them. And after you see their work, you may never look at a photograph the same way again.

For example, photographer April Friges of Bloomfield displays work that questions the common notion of photography as defined by flat objects, dependent on a wall or frame, and typically rectangular and static.

But here, Friges has turned the paper upon which photographs are developed into sculpture. “cMy rgb” is a magenta ribbon of photographic paper, unfurled and made static by way of a sculpted plaster-like support.

For Friges, it's not just the photo paper she uses, but what's on it that is important. Striving to create colors in their purest form, she is inspired by the subtractive color wheel; cyan, magenta and yellow, which can create secondary colors; red, green and blue. “In total, these colors are the basis on all color photography,” she says.

The title “cMy rgb,” hints at this notion perfectly.

“The title references the subtractive color method, CMY (cyan, magenta, yellow), which is used in the color darkroom, the act of cancellation of different light to color balance images,” Friges explains.

Also choosing to work purely with paper is Julie Weber of Chicago, whose piece “Three Permutations of Light (Agfa Insignia Warmton 2 Baryta)” explores what happens when photo chemicals oxidize the silver gelatin coating of different photographic papers over time.

“This work has been about undoing and rethinking common perception that a photograph is a static image, a document of a moment passed,” Weber says. “Photography is in some sense synonymous with memory, but memory is such a slippery and unreliable faculty. So making this work has been a way for me to embrace the impermanence and ephemeral nature of the medium that is widely overlooked.”

Dust, the natural enemy of the photographer, is embraced in four large pieces by another Chicago photographer, Jessica Labatte. Here, in these pieces from her series “Spotting” (2014-15), the photographer reveals the usually hidden process of retouching in Photoshop.

“These images also start out as still lives sculpted from paper,” Labatte says. “I shoot these images on color film, using a large format camera. After the film is developed, I scan the negatives using a high-resolution scanner. The scanning process reveals dust and other tiny imperfections imperceptible to the human eye.”

Ironically, the high-resolution scans that make large-format inkjet printing possible illuminate every particle of dust that graces the surface of the film, even specks beyond the photographer's vision. It can take hours to remove dust from a digital file.

“My studio assistants help remove these dust spots and imperfections using tools in Photoshop,” Labatte says. “However, rather than leaving their retouching process hidden, as most photographers would do, I show you the brushy gestures each individual uses to clean-up the image.”

In the end, the images may look like Abstract Expressionist paintings, but in actuality they show the record of a functional photographic process — digital retouching.

Andy Mattern of Stillwater, Okla., draws his inspiration from the cardboard boxes that package photo paper and film.

His series “Standard Size” emerged out of a spontaneous effort to “purge my studio of uninvited images,” he says.

“The boxes of photographic paper that I use to print my work often display example photographs that I find visually distracting, so I cut or sanded them off and covered up the text with colored tape.”

After re-photographing those compositions, he says, “The result appears to be a form of abstraction, but really it is completely literal and representational because the photographs are printed to match the exact color and size of their subjects.

“I think it fits into the show because all the artists are questioning some aspect of photography as an art form and asking what a photograph can be rather than working within the established boundaries of the medium.”

Zach Nader of Brooklyn, N.Y., is interested in the brief moment before an image completely falls apart, as it “unhinges from its source and its previous locations.”

To that end, he presents several large-scale prints that are based on appropriated fashion ads, commercials and movies.

“I'm interested in how images function in the world and how scripted software functions influence their creation and use,” Nader says. “I conduct image-based experiments, and, in this instance, automated software tools are introduced into existing images, by either placing multiple images into conflict or setting elements of an image against itself.”

While we usually think of photography as showing us one fixed point in space and time, Gloucester, Mass.-based artist Dan Boardman's process creates images that show multiple moments simultaneously emerging through hand-cut forms.

Though pieces like “7 Habits” and “The Saw” look like some vintage 1920s surrealist experiments gone haywire, miraculously, these images were created entirely in the camera, on one piece of film with no digital manipulation.

“It's interesting to see how the act of discovery in this familiar medium is just as exciting and vibrant as it's ever been,” says Boardman, whose words could also ring true of this show as a whole.

Kurt Shaw is the Tribune-Review art critic.