Sculptural Photography

I remember an online conversation about whether there was an advantage to painting with real paint as opposed to using software and pixels. The crushing blow delivered against pixel-based painting (as well as photography and fractal images) was the absence of texture. Texture that one could feel; texture that would actually be three dimensional and not just simulated. HDR images can look 3D almost like being in a movie theater watching fantastic 3D effects; however, this added dimensionality is only psychological, not tangible. 

There have been faux attempts at texture with media such as modge-podge. I even watched a painter in a Thomas Kincade store (not Kincade himself) applying painted highlights to one of Kincade's reproductions (giclée). And now we have 3D printers that can literally print dimensional objects (presumably these will print objects with images if not doing so already). 

My own adventure in getting to dimensionality outside the two-dimensional printed surface started by using a flatbed printer. Instead of a piece of paper or mylar or whatever substrate we print on being fed through an inkjet, laser, dot matrix or other printer or being processed in a pan of chemicals, the ink can be applied to a surface of variable height. In my experiments, I used surfaces with different heights that could be joined together to form a single image. 

What does that really mean? How would such an object, especially a photographic object look, if created in this way?

So, here are my recent experiments in what might be called sculptural photography.

Wood and Metal Photograph
After seeing what a flatbed printer could do at Pixel2Editions, I decided to see what a photograph would look like if printed at two different heights (on a plywood and metal surface). I glued 1/2" plywood strips in a helter-skelter pattern to a 13" square aluminum metal piece (about 1/16").

Notably, the image itself was not your usual high-resolution-visible-light image. The original photography was taken with a Nikon D50 converted to take only digital infrared images. I had twisted the zoom lens to get an after image. The idea was to create a sense of motion.

Dance sequence at Trolley Dances 2014, San Diego City College / Ariana Siegel and Jedi Taylor

By combining the infrared image with the metal and wood surfaces, I hoped for a presentation of a photograph that went beyond the 2D flat print. What I learned in the process was that the image printed on the metal would be further away from the height of the print nozzles; the printer had to be calibrated to the height of the plywood to avoid damaging the nozzles. This would have resulted in a lower resolution on the metal print. Instead, the plywood pieces were printed separately from the metal to give both the metal and wood segments equal resolution.

See article:  Master printer and the evolution of fine art printing. 

Infrared dancers / sculptural photography / media surfaces include both metal substrate and plywood superstrate

Infrared dancers / side view showing half inch plywood edges / photograph printed on both metal and wood

Ceramic and Metal Photograph
My second experiment began with revisiting an older series of photographs taken in Scotland, near Inverness, of a clava cairn at the Balnuaran of Clava. This circular chamber tomb had a magical effect, especially in the newly fallen snow. This Bronze Age stone chamber created a sense of wonder. I did not want to document the site as many had likely done before, but to capture that sense of immediacy of life and death.

Even changing the infrared images to a stark black-and-white did not seem to do the place justice. 

From a series of digital infrared photographs / Clava cairn / Balnuaran of Clava / Scotland

And so, I began the journey into image editing in Photoshop. I constructed three layers that I intended to have different amounts of opacity (which would allow different degrees of the scratched metal surface to be seen on which the photograph was printed). The printer at Pixel2, Mark O'Donnell, added spot white to the trees at the left and right of the upper portion of the image, lending the scene the ghostly quality of this place.

Edited photograph taken in Scotland (Balnuaran of Clava) / An ancient spiritual meeting place

The challenge was adding a three-dimensional aspect to this ancient tomb. I decided to add broken ceramic pieces to the path leading into the tomb. I broke a ceramic plate into pieces and then arranged them along a quick inkjet print of the entryway. These pieces were then printed on the flatbed following the same print of that area that was now on the metal substrate. With those ceramic pieces having the identical image within the tomb pathway, the pieces were glued to the metal print.

This approach, along with the wood and metal print described above, may or may not be optimal for creating sculptural photographic objects. These are experiments on the pathway to adding texture, of adding another dimension to two dimensional imagery.

Odd shaped ceramic pieces from a broken plate similar to those used in the Balnuaran of Clava metal print

Ceramic pieces on metal print / both metal and ceramic pieces had image printed on them on a flatbed printer

Demonstration of flatbed printer at Pixel2editions

Glass and ceramic objects using photography
Here are two other approaches using photography that seek out the third dimension of depth.

YC Kim fuses a photograph of trees into slumped glass. The bottom glass layer is black and the upper layer is blue within which is sandwiched the photographic image. 

YC Kim / Photo sandwiched between blue and black layers of glass - heated at 1400 degrees F / Side view (Upper), Top view (Lower) 

The second example shows a pair of ceramic plates. The upper plate has the photograph printed with a flatbed printer on the bottom surface. Since the photograph does not leave the flat surface, it "fails" the test of three dimensionality. Compare that object to the one below. A photograph of a drawing by Paola Villaseñor rises up from the flat surface of the ceramic plate along the upper and lower edges. The lower object would be another example of adding a depth dimension to photography, following the example of the cube photographs of Thomas Germer rather than the texturized object of Ethan Greenbaum (discussed below).

Photo of Paola Villasenor painting mural / Top view

Line drawing printed on ceramic plate (edited) / Side View (1) drawing rises onto rising lip of ceramic plate; (2) detail of drawing on lower
flat portion of ceramic plate; (3) drawing rises onto lower area of rising lip of ceramic plate

Other examples of sculptural photography
Other artists have played with the notion of sculptural photography. Take the interaction suggested by image as sculpture and sculpture as image in the work of Lonneke van der Palen. Or an exhibit at the New York Museum of Modern Art, which tracked the use of photography from 1839 through the ensuing 170 years in capturing the sculptural image. Still, those are two-dimensional portrayals of the sculptural form. 

One way out of this dilemma is to create three dimensional objects, such as a cube, and layer each side with part of a photograph. See the work of Thomas Germer.

Compare Germer's approach to Ethan Greenbaum's objects that are more closely related to the tactile sense discussed in this article:  "[h]e photographs asphalt, basement trapdoors, grafittied surfaces and manholes that depict the way he sees the city and its constant evolution. And then he manipulates the images digitally, gets them printed on large plastic sheets that then are vacuum molded around ceiling tiles. The result is a super texturized piece that is also highly visual.  In a very simple way, Ethan is creating sculptures out of photographs." (Quoted from Out There, October 2014)

Greenbaum's super texturizing of the original image is the notion I am pursuing. Clearly, there are a variety of ways to achieve this texturized or three-dimensional result.

A much broader world of mixed media
This article sketches out a limited approach for using photography beyond the two dimensional surface. The two dimensional surface is what we are most comfortable with - whether paper, metal or even on a computer monitor. 

But we are also likely familiar with coffee mugs with photos of family members - a dye sublimation (or infusion) process. There are thermal transfers, others combining glass and photography with one artist calling her work fusography, and a myriad other ways of crafting mixed-media objects. 

The use of the phrase sculptural photography is a modest effort to focus on a limited range of mixed media objects. 

A small does of humor is a reminder of the increments with which we expand our material culture.

Guy & Rodd / A Golden Age of Culture