Past, Present, Future
Past, Present, Future
Slemmons Gallery at Epiphany Center for the Arts
November 4, 2022 to December 17, 2022
For the exhibition Past, Present, Future, artist Jay Wolke took a decidedly experimental approach to making photographs with the Al Vista panoramic camera. Borrowed from the Rod Slemmons Camera Archive, the Al Vista was made by the Multiscope & Film Corporation around 1900. It was intended to give the amateur photographer the ability to photograph grand landscapes on location, such as mountain ranges, fleets of ships or a whole city. Instead of using this camera as intended however, Wolke repurposed this instrument to record abstract “landscapes” made in the studio. His intention is to merge analogue with digital, choreographing film exposures that utilize multiple semi-transparent backdrops and lighting effects in tandem with moving elements. The unique, spring-loaded, 180-degree shutter mechanism was exploited to evoke filmic artifacts, while other, digitally created forms create a transformative marriage between 19th and 21st Century technologies.
Past, Present, Future is part of an ongoing series of photography exhibitions in Slemmons Gallery in which contemporary photographers use antique cameras from the Rod Slemmons Camera Archive to create new bodies of work. This series is offered in partnership with The Chicago Cluster Project.
For more information or to schedule a viewing appointment, please email art@epiphanychi.com.
Jay Wolke is an artist and educator living in Chicago Illinois. His photographic monographs include: All Around the House: Photographs of American-Jewish Communal Life, 1998; Along the Divide: Photographs of the Dan Ryan Expressway, 2004; Architecture of Resignation: Photographs from the Mezzogiorno, 2011 and Same Dream Another Time, 2017. His works have been exhibited internationally and are in the permanent print collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York MOMA, the Art Institute of Chicago and San Francisco MOMA, among others. His photographs have appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times Magazine, Guardian Magazine, Financial Times Magazine, Geo France, Exposure, Newsweek, Fortune, and the Village Voice. He is currently a Professor of Photography at Columbia College Chicago, where he was Chair of the Art and Design Department from 2000-2005 and again from 2008-2013.
Jay Wolke is an artist and educator living in Chicago Illinois. His photographic monographs include: All Around the House: Photographs of American-Jewish Communal Life, 1998; Along the Divide: Photographs of the Dan Ryan Expressway, 2004; Architecture of Resignation: Photographs from the Mezzogiorno, 2011 and Same Dream Another Time, 2017. His works have been exhibited internationally and are in the permanent print collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York MOMA, the Art Institute of Chicago and San Francisco MOMA, among others. His photographs have appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times Magazine, Guardian Magazine, Financial Times Magazine, Geo France, Exposure, Newsweek, Fortune, and the Village Voice. He is currently a Professor of Photography at Columbia College Chicago, where he was Chair of the Art and Design Department from 2000-2005 and again from 2008-2013.
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