Re-constructing the Past

Visual interpretations of sculptural symbology
by Dale Rio

Although photography is thought by many to be a representation of reality, it truly is an artist’s construct. As a subtractive medium, every time we frame an image, a unique world is created from the conscious decisions we make regarding what we opt to exclude from that frame. And as an additive medium, we can bring into the frame what we choose in order to build up the worlds we are creating. The equipment and processes we employ can accentuate aspects of those worlds, guiding the viewers’ emotional response to our images. 

The artists in Re-constructing the Past – Sally Chapman, Sandra C. Davis, and Tricia Rosenkilde – capitalize on both the subtractive and additive aspects of photography by re-presenting and recontextualizing the sculptural symbology of history and mythology. They utilize human-designed and -built constructs and spaces that have specific historical implications to create expressive, new worlds from existing ones. Their works serve to both bridge and meld the past and present.

In her series Mythic Nature, Sally Chapman creates imagined worlds by removing images of statues of local heroes, ancient gods, and religious icons from their stark plinths and merging them with envisioned landscapes consisting of flora plucked from manicured formal gardens, farmlands, and watery hideaways. The digital negatives she then makes are used to create cyanotype prints, to which she further adds her unique hand by drawing on and coloring them with pastels. Fascinated by statues in both public and private spaces that express the mythos, ideals, and spiritual aspirations of the communities in which they were erected, Chapman uses a form reminiscent of the traditional Asian scroll to accentuate the upward motion of the statuary and plants as they reach for both the light and our ideals.

For Sandra C. Davis, photographing historic architecture and gardens provides a way for her to explore history through its remains. In her project Mythical Gardens, she photographs ancient and Renaissance sculpture gardens using a Holga camera, which creates soft, vignetted images that evoke the dreamlike quality of memories. Davis’s vision brings to life these figures, which emerge from both the darkness and mists of time. Her framing creates a protective wall around her discoveries, holding them pure and independent from the outer world. Her use of the gum bichromate process emphasizes the historic aspect of her subject matter and heightens its sense of mystery. 

Employing pinhole photography and the historic platinum/palladium printing process, Tricia Rosenkilde creates an imaginative connection between past and present in her series Impressions. Inspired by the beauty and sense of history in old-world scenes, she seeks to capture the essence and spirit of the chateaux, gardens, fountains, and architecture that she photographs. While waiting for the long exposures required by pinhole photography, Rosenkilde is able to fully absorb the atmosphere of her surroundings, which becomes imprinted in both her mind and on the film. The fast pace of modernity is the very thing that prevents it from intruding into her slowly-exposed images, and this gradual building of light on film feels to Rosenkilde like a portal to former ages. Her choice of platinum/palladium further accentuates the ties to the past that are conveyed in her dreamlike and timeless images.