I N F L U E N C E S
Jerry Ulsman
Jerry Uelsmann is an American photographer best known for his innovative work with the photomon- tage technique. Through his practice, Uelsmann creates allegorical and surreal compositions through painstaking handmade collage. His photographs are made using only analog tools—much like the earlier photographer Oscar Gustave Rejlander, Uelsmann relies on multiple exposures and uses many enlargers to achieve his dream-like imagery. Born on June 11, 1934 in Detroit, MI, he studied for his BFA at the Rochester Institute of Technology and received his MFA from the University of Indiana. Uelsmann had his first solo show in 1967 at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, which launched his professional career. Today, the artist’s works are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among others. Uelsmann lives and works in Gainesville, FL, where he taught photography for nearly four decades at the University of Florida.
I met Jerry Ulsman in 1973 when I was a student at Missouri State University. His lecture and exhibit at the campus gallery was my introduction to the world of photo montage. The influence has stayed with me for fifty years.
Film Noir
My introduction to Film Noir came in my college years through a cinima class where I was introduced to movies like Citizen Cane and Touch of Evil. My personal favorite is The Third Man, the most visually stunning film I’ve ever seen and one that embraces every aspect of the Film Noir ganre.
The visual style of noir is the hard, undiffused look of the tabloid newspaper with cluttered, claustro- phobic dark interiors framed or restricted by the camera frame, many night scenes, off-angle and deep focus camera shots, stark chiarascuro, and low-key lighting. Noir uses dark sidewalks, rain-drenched streets, flashing neon signs, fairgrounds and carnivals (associated with madness in German expressionism), and the city as a dangerous, hostile vilain.
Although it suffers the stigma of low budget film making, black and white is the only medium that can deliver the emotion and drama of these films.
Ansel Adams
Probably the best know photographer of all time, Ansel Adams defined what black and white photog- raphy should and could be. He, along with colegue Fred Archer developed the Zone System. The 11 zones in this system were defined to represent the gradation of all the different tonal values you would see in a black and white print, with zone 5 being middle gray, zone 0 being pure black (with no detail), and zone 10 being pure white (with no detail). This system is part of how I think and create black and white images.