Friday, October 16, 2009

John Steck Jr.






What is your senior thesis?

The work I’m doing this semester is about the landscape in which I interact with. About the subtle chances that we overlook and the evolution of a space in a short period of time. It’s about exploring these ideas through different means of communication through photography. It’s about my curiosity with the different ways we can view our surroundings, along with my curiosity for the different processes of photography.

What motivated you to start this project? What inspires your creative process?

I had already been doing some landscape work from the previous semester. I was working on a project about empty plots of land within the local neighborhoods. About how that land affects a neighborhood, through its history and through the psychical appearance of it. I was fairly invested in these ideas and the work. The project ended up spawning into a lot of other paths for me. I ended up with a lot of mini series, such as fences, pathways, views of the prudential from different neighborhoods, etc.. My latest landscape work started to really hone in on little details and subtleties of the places I engaged with.

For the last year I had been working on a series I call Unique c-Prints, sometimes it’s just easier to refer to them as the “photograms” (even though they are not). This work is all done in the color darkroom, and it has allowed me to experience photography in a whole different way. I feel it is at the other end of the spectrum than my other work, but lately, it has started to merge together. My current project is the combination of these two projects, and how they communicate with each other to speak a single language about my curiosity as a photographer.

Do you work in film or digital? Please describe any technique or process relevant to your project.

I only shoot film for my landscapes. Mostly with a 4x5 camera. The “photograms” actually involve no film at all since they are created in the color darkroom. For those I just use the color enlarger and color paper. The objects in the “photograms” I actually place in the enlarger head, as if it were a negative, and I let the light shine through it (or at times it doesn’t shine through) to create an image that explores a different experience with the objects I use. This process allows me to show the details of these objects that we would normally overlook, and at times I am also able to abstract these objects into other creations. The earlier work in this project was more about categorizing and experimentation of the objects, but lately it has become more involved with my interest in the landscape.

Is this a new project or a continuation of previous work?


It is previous work merged together to become new work.
What artists or works of art have inspired or influenced you?
That’s a tough question cause I feel like I’m constantly being inspired from many different mediums. For the projects I’m currently working on, a few names come to mind that I reference a lot, such has Gary Fabian Miller and Karl Blossfeldt, whom both work in similar fashions that I do.

What kind of response do you hope to get from your viewers? Is there a certain experience you want people to take away from your photographs?

Depends on the series. For my current work I like letting the viewer have their own unique experience with the work. I guess every artist wants that, but what I mean is to let each viewer have a different experience from the next viewer. Some of the work in my current series is abstracted enough that one person might see the beauty in it, one might be disgusted, one might be completely confused, or one might see it and go “eh” and then move on. I want all of that. I want praise and I want grunts.

What is the ideal setting to view your work? Do you picture your photographs in a book? In a gallery?

Both really. I have always been open with presentation and forums to getting my work out there. Lately, I have been showing at several different local galleries and artist co-ops, as well as submitting to competitions and online photography sites. I have had a vision of maybe getting into my own book making, exploring different ways of presenting in that from. I would like to see where that could go.

Do you have any ideas or plans for future work?


Well I plan on working on my current project for some time now, but I do have a few other ideas lurking in my head. I am still interested in shooting portraits, which I have done before, but I am still not completely comfortable with it. I want to see where that might go. I also have had an interest in making my art available to the public, as in I have had this urge to start giving away my work. It sounds a little crazy even to me but I want to sit on this idea for a while and see where that leads me. I guess I just want there to be a stronger community in the art world, one where we can start to be selfless and more about effecting others.

What do you see yourself doing after graduation?

After I graduate from Mass Art I plan to go right into a graduate program. I already took two years off after I graduated at NESOP, so I am ready to jump right into that two-year commitment. After grad school I would like to teach and continue working on whatever my work is at that time.

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