words//carolyn hedlund
Lucas Blalock, a new New York based photographer, states that his work illustrates the way that falseness/mechanics in pictures can bring us closer to the world. In this interview he answers questions about how he succeeds in doing this using overlapping, patterns, mirrors, and (only some) fake fruit.
Describe the different types of materials you’re working with now. Where do you find these objects?
I work with really simple materials that I pick up at the dollar store, or the hardware store, or the fabric shop. The selections come from browsing around and seeing possibilities in various objects. They sort of pick themselves.
Most of your current work contains mirrors or even a simulation of the beveled edges of a mirror framing an image; for example, in your photo Untitled (Both Yes and No). Explain this.
I wouldn’t say that most of my pictures contain mirrors but they are something I have used over the past year. I got interested in using mirrors partially because (like photographs) they seem to hold space behind their surface, which makes them really ambiguous objects to look “at”. When I started using them it was very informational. I wanted to show several sides of an object at once. Since then I opened up into another set of possibilities.
I had not thought of Untitled (Both Yes and No) as a mirror reference, but I can see what you mean. I sort of see these kinds of things as being side by side. I think the doubling in my work (in all its varieties) has something to do with undermining the authority of the picture or making the viewer aware that there are other possibilities and other views.
How does the usage of programs like Photoshop, and other forms of digital manipulation, influence the creation of your work?
Photoshop is a tool I have been using for a long time now but in the last few years I started to see possibility in bringing this tool into the picture in a more open way. I am interested in the way that both the camera and Photoshop can be seen as technologies of invisibility that obscure or occlude their own presence in the creation of an image. So in turn, I have been exploring the kinds of pictures that become available if you make the evidence of these tools apparent.
Is there relevance in your usage and repetition of patterns in mass-produced fabrics in your work?
The patterns I tend to use are sort of over defined like gingham or the red and white stripes that remind me of beach movies. I think through their overuse they become pliable again but partially retain all those earlier associations.
Does your work contain any mathematical themes?
I am doing a book with Hassla Books this fall that will be titled Towards a Warm Math. The title refers to a way I have been thinking about photography as more inherently numerical than narrative. Taking a photograph is a subtractive process (taking a thing out of the world) and putting together a project is more like algebra for me than it is like storytelling. I could ramble about this forever but that’s the basic idea.
You seem to use the image of food frequently; apples, grapes, bananas, cherries, bread. Do you see some sort of impersonal qualities in these objects, being that most are made of plastic?
Actually only the grapes are plastic. The food has a lot to do with what is at hand when I am in my studio. It also relates somewhat to an interest in still life painting, particularly Cezanne who has been a touchstone for me over the last year or so. I think if they feel impersonal it might be because I have been very aware of not wanting them to fall into a kind of domestic reading, but I don’t really think of them as cold.
It seems as though you rarely work with people. Is this to avoid attributing a personal narrative to your work?
I have been intending to work with people more. I think it’s something I am still working out. It’s challenging. I am actually currently looking for some new people to photograph. If anyone out there is interested in sitting please send me an email.
There is also rarely the inclusion of natural settings in your photographs; can you explain how your photo Emphasis on Sport relates to the rest of your current body of work?
I think it relates through the way that you are asked to look around the picture. I find it a sort of uncomfortable picture to look at because it’s got this feeling that you are at a dead end or that something is missing. For me this happens in one way or another in a lot of my pictures. I would like to make more pictures out in the world but right now in my life the studio is the situation where I can accomplish the most.
What are you currently working on?
My work just sort of keeps going. I am still working in the studio a lot.
Are there any artists that you find interesting, either working now or in the past, that have inspired you?
There are so many artists I love! Off the top, I was just in a show with Ruth van Beek who makes great work. I loved Amy Sillman’s last show at Sikkema. Robert Smithson and Robert Irwin are both important to me. I am also a huge fan of a slew of 19th century artists and photographers as well as usual suspects like Man Ray and Duchamp. Probably most crucially, I am surrounded by a pretty amazing group of working artists in Brooklyn (including Kate Steciw, Chris Wiley, Sam Falls, and Barney Kulok, among others) who have been instrumental in helping me push my own practice.
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To see more of Lucas Blalock’s work, go check out his website.