The Photographic Object: Intervention / Recovery
with Raymond Meeks
TICKET COST - $5450
A contemporary printmaking workflow most often begins with a digital file sent to an inkjet printer that’s been calibrated to produce an image on a coated sheet capable of achieving predictable results. And though the prints made in this workflow might feel satisfying, they often fall short of generating a distinguishing presence or expressing the object qualities of a silver gelatin print that’s benefited from the sustained attention of an analog process. Happenstance and accident intervene to inform a transformative rendering of the print.
In this four-day workshop, Raymond will work with alumni to mix chance with choice to allow for surprising interventions and discoveries in the process of making. The focus will be the crafting of objects, including silver gelatin and silver halide prints made from digital negatives; Carbon inkjet prints made on repurposed paper; Books that will be disassembled while making new use of the contents and materials to inform a newly constructed book. Alumni will experiment with applying finishes to inkjet prints, as well as mounting prints to numerous substrates using adhesive films. The emphasis, throughout, will be on immediacy and an urgency of making. Throughout the process of making, we’ll allow for the conditions where interventions (accidents) can invite the use of recovery in order to rescue the object. For Ray, this period of finding a solution to salvage the work can be the transformative place where a work of art begins to assume its own autonomy, separate from the artist’s intent and taking on layered meaning.
WHAT TO BRING: Attendees will provide their own silver gelatin paper and a small selection of books they’d like to consider for repurposing. We will provide film for digital negatives, 11×14 silver halide film, and bookmaking supplies.
“Raymond Meeks guided us with patience and precision, helping each of us transform our overwhelming projects into clear, poetic objects. His feedback was specific, thoughtful, and grounded in experience, making us feel both understood and supported in an almost nurturing way. ”
“Ray is a treasure. I came in to the class stuck in a creative rut, with a body of work I loved but just didn’t know how to finish. Ray’s insight and guidance was exactly what I needed, and I left not only with a book that ranks among my favorite works I’ve ever created but more inspired and excited to make new work than I had been in years.”
“Ray nurtured my creativity without ever imposing his view of what the project should be. Instead, he, along with the other participants, encouraged me to look deeply inside myself and the work to develop my own perspective on what I was trying to communicate through my images. I was prompted to search deeply within myself for answers to the questions I was asking. I am grateful to Ray and the Chico Review community for their support and encouragement. ”
About Raymond Meeks
Raymond Meeks (Ohio, 1963) has been recognized for his books and pictures centered on memory and place, the way in which a landscape can shape an individual and, in the abstract, how a place possesses you in its absence. His books have been described as a field or vertical plane for examining interior co-existences, as life moves in circles and moments and events—often years apart—unravel and overlap, informing new meanings.
Raymond Meeks lives and works in the Hudson Valley (New York). His work is represented in private and public collections including the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., Bibliotheque Nationale, France, and the George Eastman House, with recent solo exhibitions at Casemore Kirkeby in San Francisco and Wouter van Leeuwen in Amsterdam. Raymond Meeks is the sixth laureate of Immersion, a French-American photography commission sponsored by Fondation d’entreprise Hermès. Mentored by David Campany, artistic director of the ICP, he carried out his residency in France in 2022.
Raymond Meeks is a 2020 recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Photography and was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2022.
*Each Alumni Ticket includes all of the regular privileges you’d expect: access to daily artist lectures, daily catered meals, panel discussions, evening programming, and more.
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