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Jim: When people want to create a space that the viewer feels a part of, one of the first things they often do is make the image large. Is that something you purposefully didn't do?
Chris: Yes. When I look at artwork, I like to walk up close to it and have my personal moment with that piece. When a piece of artwork is as large as a wall, you have to step back to really see it all. You can go in and look at the details, but as you're stepping back, you share that space with about five people and it's not a very intimate experience. So by making it small, it forces the viewer to really walk up to it and to be alone with it, and not have the five other people surrounding it.
Jim: And the fragmentation of it has to do with focusing its attention on that particular part?
Chris: The fragmentation is to draw attention to how you view something. When you're looking up and down, you might stop for a second before you move to the next section of the landscape.
Jim: In taking photographs like that, there is a certain amount of overlap, so you see the bottom of something or the top of something in one picture, and then you see a little bit of that same thing in the next picture.
Chris: I am very aware of creating tension with the overlapping. When I create that little piece of sky, [speaking about Jones Hole
|1|] and then that big expanse of sky, without showing the land connecting, you're really made aware of those two forms. That is really important to make the viewer aware of that tension and that this is a progression, not just perfect, ideal movement from tone to tone.
Jim: Another thing that's happening which seems to reference a scientific kind of photography, is you purposefully don't match the tones between the prints.
|2-3| These are silver gelatin prints - if you're doing this in the dark room, do you have rules against burning or dodging?
Chris: No, not at all. This body of work is not about representing what was really there accurately. Burning and dodging in the darkroom lets me use tones to create movement to direct the viewer's eye and try to help them feel a connection with the place. One of the things I love to do is to put my feet at the bottom because I think that helps a person connect with the place and think, "I really am standing there."
|4| I love being in a place. I love the details and everything but I don't want to just see a reproduction of great leaves on a fall day. It's more about everything surrounding you and that's what interests me. I think that's why people like landscapes, and photographers often don't try to recreate that experience. They try to make something beautiful, but I don't think they really try to make the experience. And that's what I'm more interested in.
Jim: Now going to the Contact series. When you have all of the little numbers and sprocket holds and bar codes and stuff like that, to me that says, this is done with film - why did you put all that stuff in there?
Chris: For a couple of reasons. One is I prefer working with film and I think people automatically assume that everything is digital these days. I like to kind of throw it back out and say, you can still do a lot with film and there is still a lot of film being used. That's one reason. Another reason is the idea of evidence. I want people to know that I did shoot those in that order. And that is really important for people to realize I started here and I got here and I put this piece here for a reason. I want them to realize that it's well thought out; it's coming out of my head and my use of the camera rather than Photoshop. I also like to do things as low tech as I can which is why I wanted to make it out of a contact sheet. You don't need to enlarge it - you just take your film, you put it on the paper and expose it.
Jim: You had mentioned that in that particular work there was the idea of it being like a person who keeps a journal. In the landscape things you're also talking about the viewer having a personal experience. That strikes me as something that might be similar between the two bodies of work. It's the personal experience.
Chris: I would agree with that. The landscape is more trying to put somebody in a space and part of that is seeing things through my eyes. But I think it's more about them being in the space. The color work I would say is emphasizing how I see things and trying to put somebody kind of behind my eyes more than it is trying to put them in the space.
Jim: The subject matter in Contact is varied and ordinary, compared to the Vertical Landscapes.
Chris: The idea behind those images is to take things that are pretty much routine in my life and observe them and deconstruct them and reconstruct them for the viewer. So most of the interiors are from my house and most of the outside shots are from things I walk by daily.
|5-6| It's about presenting the things that I see daily to people.
Jim: How do the individual frames relate to the whole?
Chris: I start out with the idea of the whole image that I want. And I'll try to make it a nice composition just as a whole. And as I'm trying to establish what that whole piece will be, I'll look at the details that interest me within the whole. After that, I'll just take my camera to my eye. I won't do a whole lot of preplanning. But I'll know where I want to start and I'll know where I'll want to be by frame 15. And I'll know where I'll want to be by frame 24. And I'll try and line things up as I'm looking through the camera.
Jim: To what extent are you composing each frame? Are you interested in some of them more than others?
Chris: Definitely. When I'm actually looking through the camera, I'll try to make each frame composed in an interesting way. So I'm moving things around and I'm not trying to line it up perfectly because that's not always the best option. So to an extent, I'm composing each piece to be its own individual photograph, but I want the whole to be greater than its parts. So I'll make a couple of frames boring if that's better for the whole composition.
