10 augusti, 2024

Residency artist – Sean Patrick Hill

Andra veckan i juli anlände konstnären Sean Patrick HIll till Nordingrå Konstbys residens för en två veckors vistelse. Här kan du läsa om hans konstnärskap, planen för residenset och arbetet i och efter vistelsen i Nordingrå Konstby:

Sean Patrick Hill is a photographer, freelance writer, essayist, educator, and poet. He is a graduate of the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers and a juried artist in the Kentucky Crafted program. He has been awarded grants and fellowships from the Kentucky Arts Council, South Arts, the Great Meadows Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center, the Elizabeth George Foundation, and the Regional Arts and Culture Council. He is the author of five books, and his photographs have been featured in solo exhibitions in the Joel Gallery at the Bascom: A Center for Visual Arts and Louisville Visual Art, as well as Highlands Performing Arts Center, First Light Gallery, Pyro Gallery, and the Chateau Gallery.

Description of my work:

I am a large- and medium-format film photographer. My subject is landscape in its various forms—not only nature but urban areas, too, are “landscapes” to me—and oftentimes it is created in the manner of nonrepresentational photography, such as that practiced by Minor White and Brett Weston. I am drawn most to landscapes that are undisturbed by human activity, and though I focus on Kentucky landscapes, I travel widely. In the recent past I have photographed in Death Valley, Capitol Reef, and the Blue and Smoky Mountains.

Landscape photography, for me, is a form of meditation. The large format view camera and my use of film force me to closely consider my subject, and the technical demands of composition make this a lengthy process. I’m also a practitioner of Ansel Adams’ Zone System, exercising complete control of tonalities as they are recorded on the film’s emulsion and then transcribed to the light sensitive paper. Panchromatic and color film are capable of recording an incredible amount of detail. The gelatin silver print, in particular, not only records light, it emits it through the light reflected off the silver in the emulsion.

The photographer Minor White said, “Be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence.” A photograph, for me, is an act of affirmation of our full attention to the natural world. My wish is for the viewer, fully attentive, to dwell on the photograph for a long time and become absorbed in the image, just as I was in making it.

Residency plans:

I chose Nordingrå Konstby on the recommendation of my good friend, the photographer Shachaf Polakow, who attended in December, 2023. He suggested that the Swedish landscape, especially the Höga Kusten, would have an effect on my photography and my life, and said that Nordingrå Konstby would make my experience there the best it could be.

Before I came, my aims were twofold: first, to photograph the landscape using medium format panchromatic film and 35mm color negative film, and to create negatives where I could later experiment with different methods of printing, including alternative processes like lithography; second, I attended at the same time as friend and poet Francine Conley, with the goal of collaborating and combining words and images.

While there, I traveled with Francine and by myself throughout the Nordingrå region daily for two weeks. Some of the places visited were Skuleskogen National Park, many nature reserves (Rotsidan, Norrfällsviken, and others), as well as villages, chapels, and churches. While there, we also traveled to Umeå to visit the Bildmuseet, where we viewed the ecological exhibitions.

After a brief interlude in Stockholm, I returned home with 160 black-and-white negatives and 180 color negatives. Now the task is to begin experimenting with printing the black-and-white negatives. Later, Francine and I will think about what a collaborative project might look like.

Läs mer om Sean Patrick Hill och hans arbete här:

www.seanpatrickhill.com

FB: https://www.facebook.com/sean.p.hill.3/

IG: @kentuckyfieldguide