Folded Photography

Artist’s Statement

Folded Cyanotypes and Folded Palladiums are closely related bodies of work that use historic photo processes to create works on paper. In both cases the paper is folded, coated with photo fluid, then exposed to light. After that, I rinse the paper in fixative to reveal the image, simultaneously flattening it. The Folded Cyanotypes produce a pattern in which the areas where light touched the paper during exposure turn blue, while the areas that stayed in shadow remain white. Folded Palladiums show a gradation of blacks, whites, and grays in various geometric and geomorphic patterns, also determined by the folding pattern. In both cases the images are at once a description of the folding process that created them and something far more subjective. Silvery tones float like smoke over heavy blocks. Perceived space ebbs and flows over curving biomorphic forms. The folding patterns are my own invention, often inspired by natural forms or an expansion on the vast catalog of known folds.

The fields of camera-less photography, printmaking, sculpture, and drawing all inform the work. Though under close inspection, slight undulations in the paper from its previously folded state can be seen, the result is objectively quite flat. However, our perception of it can be anything but. That tension between two-and three-dimensional
space allows us to consider the phenomenon of perception, while providing a window into the process and materials involved in the creation of the image. I often think about the difference between what we see and what we understand, between physical fact
and psychic effect. My Folded Palladiums and Folded Cyanotypes exist in space between those dueling aspects of our perception.

Read more from Issue 23.1.