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Image by Rebecca Holbrook-Erhart, from Hidden Archive.
"In the process of doing their work, photographers inevitably generate archives. These two photographers think their way with and through the things of a world that is aloof yet simultaneously available to our perceptions, our curiosity, and our projections." — Ray Klimek
Short Summary
I’m seeking support to self-publish a book called Unpacked Box, a project featuring newly published photographic works from James Luckett and Rebecca Holbrook-Erhart, and an insightful essay by Ray Klimek. This project develops the potential meanings of photo-images and their changes over time, and gives space for the artist/viewer interpretation.
Who makes an image, and what happens to the leftover, draft, mistaken, and forgotten images for a project over time? Who views the image, who owns the right to give the image meaning, and in what way do our personal images speak to larger concerns about historical context, social and cultural movements, and our human place within larger geographic space, geologic and myth-time. These are questions I keep asking as I work through this book project.
My goal: A thoughtfully curated book which begins with a single question:
What do artist's unused images mean now?
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Read more about how this project started:
Tangling with Forgotten Photographs on Medium.com
‘Unpacked Box’ to Examine Crucial Essence of Discarded Images — Profile on WOUB.ORG
Examining the Message of the Discarded Image — Interview on WOUB.ORG [Soundcloud]
Artists of the Unpacked Box
Rebecca Holbrook-Erhart
Kentucky, born and raised. Relocated to the Chicagoland area from Eastern KY and Southeastern OH in Summer 2013. Her work rests on the power of the photograph to document both the familial and familiar, and in doing so, to reveal our subjective, interior interpretations of the images we make, keep, and tell. This work is difficult, emotionally fraught stuff lying just beneath the veneer of everyday places and things.
One project I want to share here is Rebecca's expansive project The Promise, a powerful book of images and texts dealing with loss, passages of time, memories, and traveling bodies through the lens of recorded and archived personal moments. This book keeps a heavy story, making available the variety of detail often lost in the wake of family change, and personal grief. These details crystalize with time: phone calls, shared meals, hotel stays, arguments, and family gatherings become part of the complex ground upon which we all tell our stories, and make her personal narrative a universal one.
Rebecca has an M.F.A. in Photography and Integrated Media is from Ohio University, and an M.A. in Art from Marshall University, and for the last few years has worked on staff at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
James Luckett
Working for over twenty years in art and photography and exhibited nationally, James Luckett has an M.F.A. from the University of Arizona, worked as a master printer in a forensic photography lab and taught award winning photography classes in Tucson and Chicago. A recipient of a 2011 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, James is also a master of soups, salads, comfort food, and a super star baker of breads in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
His self published 2009 photography book Suginami, an exploration of the ways the landscape layers in the edges of a frame and of the space of discovery between the viewfinder and the eye, was developed from daily walks through the neighborhood where he lived in Tokyo at the time. Sheila Newberry writes about it in Walks through Suginami, and Stacy Platt in One Thing Done Two Ways.
Perhaps you too have encountered this artist's work at Wittenberg University, The University of Arizona Museum of Art, Kenyon College, Newcastle University, or the Photographic Center Northwest, among many others.
James was born in Stuttgart and, following the pleasures of living and working in Olympia, Tokyo and Ann Arbor, has settled his studio and darkroom in Springfield, Ohio. His interests and exploits are detailed on his long- running, ever-evolving, always-accumulating website, Consumptive.org, and here— @consumptive.
Ray Klimek
I met Ray at Ohio University in Athens in 2012. Ray's work addresses landscape and place-making through the lens of history and fantasy. His depth and breadth of literary and art historical knowledge is overwhelming, at any point in a given conversation he will connect an artist's choice of material or method to the work of a little known poet, a crime novel character, a fleeting image in a jazz documentary, or the sounds coming through a studio window.
Ray has an M.F.A. in Photography and an M.A. in English Literature from Rutgers University, and has staged solo exhibitions of his work at Unsmoke Systems Artspace (Braddock, PA), Stevenson Gallery at Ohio University (Chillicothe, OH), the ARC Gallery (Chicago, IL), Marietta College Gallery (Marietta, OH), Roy G Biv Gallery (Columbus, OH), Zobole Gallery (South Wales, UK), Sordoni Gallery (Wilkes-Barre, PA),and the GPF Gallery (South Wales, UK).
Ray is the 2013 Ohio University Research Council Grant recipient, was awarded a 2004 International Center of Photography-The Tierney Family Foundation Grant, and a 2003 Teaneck, NJ Grant from The Puffin Foundation. His teaching straddles studio arts, art history & theory, film, and literary courses, reaching back decades at variety of institutions.
His writings expand the conversation outward from the visual, comparisons and metaphor spiraling out toward an ever reaching horizon line. His essay How the Light Gets In: Notes on James Benning’s Ten Skies, cemented my interest in making space in this project for his writing.
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Book Design/Layout: I am thrilled to work with a top notch graphic designer and friend, Qing Wang, to take my rough book design and make it shine. Her input and thoughtful approach to design, font choices, and layout cannot be overstated.
Please consider supporting these artists—every contribution is helpful!
