The Mind’s Eye 50 Years of Photography by Jerry UelsmannArt Blart

Exhibition: ‘The Mind’s Eye: 50 Years of Photography by Jerry Uelsmann’ at Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA

Exhibition dates: 11th February – 15th July, 2012

Jerry Uelsmann (American, 1934-2022)
Untitled (Pigeon Hill, Bloomington, Indiana)
1958-1959
Gelatin silver print
5 3/8 x 9 1/8 in (13.6 x 23.3cm)
© Jerry Uelsmann

More wonderful photographs from this magnificent photographer as featured in this touring exhibition. It is invaluable to see other images from the artist’s oeuvre (especially early work from the 1950s to observe thematic development), not just the most famous of the surreal montages. Untitled (1966, below) is an absolute ripper that I have never seen before while Untitled (1959, bottom) is as disturbing in a fantastical way as any of Joel-Peter Witkins’ theatrical tableaux vivant.

See my other posting on this exhibition from the Harn Museum of Art, Florida.

Marcus

Many thankx to the Peabody Essex Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Jerry Uelsmann (American, 1934-2022)
Room #1
1963
Gelatin silver print
9 1/8 x 13 3/4 in (23.3 x 34.8cm)
© Jerry Uelsmann

Jerry Uelsmann (American, 1934-2022)
Untitled
1966
Gelatin silver print
6 1/2 x 6 5/8 in (16.6 x 16.8cm)
© Jerry Uelsmann

Jerry Uelsmann (American, 1934-2022)
Untitled
1962
Gelatin silver print
8 1/2 in x 7 3/4 in (21.5 x 19.6cm)
© Jerry Uelsmann

Jerry Uelsmann (American, 1934-2022)
Bless Our Home and Eagle
1962
Gelatin silver print
13 3/8 x 10 1/2 in (33.8 x 26.5cm)
© Jerry Uelsmann

Beautiful and surreal, funny and provocative, the photographs of Jerry Uelsmann are icons of American photo history. The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) presents the first retrospective of Uelsmann’s work in over 30 years. The Mind’s Eye: 50 Years of Photography by Jerry Uelsmann features 90 works spanning the artist’s celebrated and wide-ranging career, with well-known works shown alongside never-before-seen recent images.

As a pioneer of contemporary photography and master of experimental darkroom technique, Uelsmann has continuously pushed the creative and technical boundaries of photography, revealing new visual possibilities and critical considerations for the medium. In the late 1950s, Uelsmann began experimenting with multiple enlargers and advanced masking, diffusing, burning and dodging techniques, to create imaginary images in the darkroom decades before the advent of Photoshop. Uelsmann’s ingenious work references Surrealists like Rene Magritte, Max Ernst, and Man Ray, as well as Modern photographers such as Edward Weston and Ansel Adams. He has spent his career advocating for the acceptance of experimental photography as an art form.

“For more than half a century, Uelsmann has challenged conventional ideas about what photography can and should do,” said Phillip Prodger, exhibition curator and PEM’s curator of photography. “Uelsmann’s pictures provide a valuable touchstone for understanding new trends in photographic art. His ideas and example have become ever more relevant as photography embraces Photoshop and other computer technologies for altering and manipulating photographs.”

The Mind’s Eye presents works drawn from the artist’s personal archive of vintage materials and, in addition to photographic prints, includes a selection of three-dimensional photographic sculptures, films, artist’s books, albums and work prints to give viewers first-hand insight into Uelsmann’s creative process and expressive range. Through experimental techniques, Uelsmann has explored universal themes of relationships, family, home and politics by creating unexpected and surprising juxtapositions.

“My visual quest is driven by a desire to create a universe capable of supporting feelings and ideas,” said Jerry Uelsmann. “I am drawn to art that challenges one’s sense of reality.”

Born in Detroit in 1934, Uelsmann received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1957 and Master of Science and Master of Fine Arts degrees from Indiana University in 1960. He is recently retired from the faculty of the University of Florida, which he joined in 1960. Uelsmann received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1967 he had his first solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Press release from the PEM website

Jerry Uelsmann (American, 1934-2022)
Magritte’s Touchstone (first version)
1965
Gelatin silver print
© Jerry Uelsmann

Jerry Uelsmann (American, 1934-2022)
Untitled
1977
Gelatin silver print
13 1/8 x 10 5/8 in (33.5 x 27.1cm)
© Jerry Uelsmann

Jerry Uelsmann (American, 1934-2022)
Untitled
1996
Gelatin silver print
19 5/8 x 14 3/4 in (49.8 x 37.4cm)
© Jerry Uelsmann

Jerry Uelsmann (American, 1934-2022)
Untitled
1976
Gelatin silver print
19 1/2 x 14 1/2 in (49.5 x 36.9cm)
© Jerry Uelsmann

Jerry Uelsmann (American, 1934-2022)
Bloomington, Indiana
1958
Gelatin silver print
7 7/8 x 7 1/4 in (19.9 x 18.3cm)
© Jerry Uelsmann

Jerry Uelsmann (American, 1934-2022)
Untitled
1959
Gelatin silver print
13 1/2 x 5 5/8 in (34.2 x 14.3cm)
© Jerry Uelsmann

Peabody Essex Museum
East India Square
161 Essex Street
Salem, MA 01970-3783 USA
Phone: 978-745-9500, 866-745-1876

Opening hours:
Open Tuesday – Sunday 10am – 5pm
Closed Mondays

Peabody Essex Museum website

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Exhibition: ‘The Mind’s Eye, 50 Years of Photography by Jerry Uelsmann’ at the Harn Museum of Art, Florida

Exhibition dates: 14th June – 11th September 2011

Jerry Uelsmann (American, 1934-2022)
Apocalypse II
1967
Gelatin silver print
10 3/4 x 13 5/8 in (27.2 x 34.5cm)
Collection of the artist
© Jerry Uelsmann

Uelsmann is one of my favourite artists. His unique vision and the skill required to execute that vision using multiple exposure of negatives in the darkroom (remember, this is all done with no Photoshop!) is outstanding. Observe the sensitivity to subject matter and the placement of disparate elements in the surrealist landscape. His photographs have real allegorical power and lodge in the viewer’s psyche. My particular favourites are the library and the house on the tree stump. Uelsmann achieves wonderful resolution to inner visions and then makes the dream-like tableaux accessible to the viewer. As one who started as a black and white photographer and who experimented with multiple exposures on one piece of silver gelatin paper in the darkroom, I can attest to how enormously difficult this process is.

The text on Wikipedia states:

“Uelsmann is a master printer producing composite photographs with multiple negatives and extensive darkroom work. He uses up to a dozen enlargers at a time to produce his final images … Uelsmann is a champion of the idea that the final image need not be tied to a single negative, but may be composed of many … he does not seek to create narratives, but rather allegorical surrealist imagery of the unfathomable … Today, with the advent of digital cameras and Photoshop, photographers are able to create a work somewhat resembling Uelsmann’s in less than a day, however, at the time Uelsmann was considered to have almost “magical skill” with his completely analog tools.”

I thank him for having the creative energy to be a magician.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

See another posting on this exhibition.

Many thankx to the Harn Museum of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Jerry Uelsmann (American, 1934-2022)
Magritte’s Touchstone (first version)
Nd
Gelatin silver print
Collection of the artist
© Jerry Uelsmann

Jerry Uelsmann (American, 1934-2022)
Mechanical Man #2
1959
Gelatin silver print
Collection of the artist
© Jerry Uelsmann

The first critical retrospective of American photographer Jerry Uelsmann’s work will open at the Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida on June 14, 2011. Uelsmann, known for his iconic, surreal style and his innovative composite printing techniques, has spent more than 50 years challenging and advocating for the acceptance of photography as an experimental art form. The Mind’s Eye, 50 Years of Photography by Jerry Uelsmann, organised by the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts will feature 89 works from every phase of the artist’s wide-ranging career, including a selection of rare pieces that have never before been on public view. Additional works from the artist’s collection will be on view only during this leg of the exhibition, open through September 11, 2011.

“The Harn Museum of Art is delighted to welcome this important exhibition of photographic works by the University of Florida’s own Jerry Uelsmann, a graduate research professor in the art department from 1960 to 1998,” said Rebecca Nagy, director of the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art. “Jerry has been, and continues to be a leader in the field and we are delighted to celebrate and look back on such a long, important, and innovative career.”

The exhibition will emphasise Uelsmann’s profound influence on the field of photography through his revolutionary mastery of composite photography. Through the presentation of images from different stages of his works, viewers will gain a new understanding of the artist’s creative process and the evolution of Uelsmann’s ideas throughout his career. The pieces on view will be drawn from the artist’s personal archive of vintage materials, and are the definitive prints of the images. A few examples of the artist’s photo sculptures, artist’s books and albums will give viewers first-hand insight into Uelsmann’s creative process.

“From the beginning of his career, Uelsmann has advocated for the acceptance of photography as an experimental art form,” said Phillip Prodger, curator of photography at the Peabody Essex Museum. “Uelsmann’s photography provides a valuable touchstone for understanding new trends in photographic art. His ideas and work have become even more relevant as photography embraces Photoshop and other computer technologies for altering and manipulating photographic pictures.”

Beginning in the late 1950s, Uelsmann succeeded in combining negatives in the darkroom to create synthetic compositions that conjure the illusion of photographic truth. Although these pictures are visually convincing, they depict scenes that often have no analogue in the real world. Evocative, unsettling, and often humorous, Uelsmann’s photographs are seldom easily resolved, inviting reflection without obvious resolution. His most famous technique, seamlessly fabricating photographs from unrelated negatives to create imaginary scenes, helped build his reputation as an experimental photographer, and cemented his standing as a leader of non-literal photography.

“My visual quest is driven by a desire to create a universe capable of supporting feelings and ideas,” said Jerry Uelsmann. “I am drawn to art that challenges one’s sense of reality.”

Press release from the Harn Museum of Art website

Jerry Uelsmann (American, 1934-2022)
Untitled
1964
Gelatin silver print
13 3/4 x 10 1/4 in (34.9 x 26.1cm)
Collection of the artist
© Jerry Uelsmann

Jerry Uelsmann (American, 1934-2022)
Untitled
1976
Gelatin silver print
19 5/8 x 14 1/4 in (49.9 x 36.3cm)
Collection of the artist
© Jerry Uelsmann

Jerry Uelsmann (American, 1934-2022)
Untitled
1982
Gelatin silver print
13 1/4 x 10 3/8 in (33.8 x 26.4cm)
Collection of the artist
© Jerry Uelsmann