Real Photo Postcard Survey @ Portrait Society

Visitor at Portrait Society Gallery - Photo © Art Elkon

After two years of effort, our Real Photo Postcard Survey opened on Gallery Night and Day at Portrait Society Gallery in Milwaukee on July 23. Milwaukee had been hit by torrential rains the day before adding an edge to the evening as heat and humidity soared. Still people were out in the streets and headed up five flights to the gallery. Art Elkon made photos throughout the evening and we made a video.

Visitors at  Portrait Society Gallery, July 2010

We put 160 palladium contact prints in four cherrywood display cases to show the chronology of their making and consider the human impulses to document, to collect, to communicate something of contemporary existence. The display cases are made by Penzoni Display in Michigan and marketed on eBay for the display of sports memorabilia. We re-purposed them. The small dark prints are demanding to look at and artist-friend Lindsay Lochman has suggested leaving magnifying glasses laying about the gallery to aid viewing. We may take her suggestion before the show ends on Saturday, October 2nd.

Installation view at Portrait Society Gallery, July 2010

A series of lifesize portraits from 8x10 transparencies made with an 11x14 Deardorff studio view camera came out of the project. The scale (72x28") emphasized the physicality of the body and the presentation of self. Scanned at high resolution and output on an Epson 9800 wide format inkjet printer on canvas, the portraits reference Rembrandt and Van Dyke paintings whose subjects were royals and the petite bourgeoisie. In 2010, we have photographed Amber D. who manages a Wendy's restaurant in Manitowoc, Thomas C., a self-proclaimed "recovering alcoholic", wrestling with the gravitas of his ancestry and Jo S., a retired psychiatric nurse. Many of the people in the photographs have intersected with us via the Midwestern art and music communities. For the most part, they are students, professors, writers, artists, curators, family, friends and neighbors.

Amber D. after a day at Wendy's at the opening

Gabriella S. and her mom Jill at the opening

Amber D. had a tough day at the Wendy's, but made the trip to Milwaukee to attend the opening still clad in her work uniform with a green badge promoting salads. Gabriella S. and her mother Jill brought bouquets of flowers and snapped pix. Many others we photographed attended too wearing the garb they were pictured in adding a "living sculpture" element to the evening.

Installation view at Portrait Society Gallery, Milwaukee, July 2010

Framed diptychs of found real photo postcard studio portraits from our collection juxtaposed with our palladium postcard portraits pointed toward our ongoing examination of and use of obsolete technologies and vernacular forms: postcards and the post office in the age of online social networking, analog photography in the age of digital imaging, the photographer's studio in the age of overvalued real estate and escalating foreclosures. Confined to our dark cave like studio for the past two years, the portraits have been taken out into the light with the exhibition.

Debra Brehmer signing catalogs - photo © Art Elkin

The gallery published a catalog/postcard set to document the project. We selected six portraits from the many we made to reproduce as postcards in the set. Two copies of each are included in a folio for a total of 12. Our hope is that the majority of the cards will be mailed out to extend the "mail art" portion of the project. It should be noted that the commissioned portrait participants received 100 postcards of themselves to mail out spinning off into projects onto themselves. The postcard set includes an essay about the project by gallerist, writer and art historian Debra Brehmer plus a grid of the 55 portraits commissioned through the Portrait Society Gallery in 2010. Catalogs are $10 each.

Installation view of Vanessa Winship's photographs, July 2010

Also on view at the Portrait Society Gallery is Vanessa Winship's Dancers and Fighters series of portraits of children in Georgia. The head-to-toe portraits provide a cultural contrast to our own portraits of Midwestern American people.

Experiments in the Studio

Most of the palladium prints are made for the Real  Photo Postcard Survey Project. Our UV exposure unit broke down right after our film processor--thus reminding us of the extensive labor involved and how we depend on all of our art-making machines to work. Editing the prints has been ongoing for months with each portrait set out in a grid on top the flat files in the entryway of our studio as it is completed. Vintage postcard portraits keep turning up and are also set out. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel covered the project while in process and that turned up a few commissions from people unknown to us thus expanding the scope. Liz Koerner from Wisconsin Public Television's "In Wisconsin" program also spent a day gathering material on the project for a segment to air in fall. We invited our Manitowoc neighbors Ryan and Richie to come by for a portrait that day.

We came upon wall-mounted specimen cases to display the prints and have been experimenting with background colors. We puzzled over how to install the prints for months (nail them to the wall in a grid? frame each individually? hang them in the standard plastic postcard holders?). Can small traditional hand-crafted prints have impact in a time when art often takes the form of grand spectacle (thinking Marina Abramovic @ MOMA or Urs Fischer excavating the floor of Gavin Brown). Our palladium prints are not much larger than an iPhone. They sit silently dark while everything streams and multitasks everywhere else. Face recognition is in the eyes of the beholder. The show opens on Gallery Night, Friday, July 23, 2010 at the Portrait Society Gallery in Milwaukee.

Real Photo Postcard Survey Project

It's Winter in Wisconsin and people are coming to our studio to be made into postcards. Amber came by with a couple new dresses and the idea that she wanted to make a fashion statement.