okay should I start over or did you hear
me oh I should start over okay Richard
Barnes divides his time between
commissioned work and personal projects
he looks at architecture as artifact and
placing it within the context of
archaeology challenges artists
conceptions of the way that we inhabit
and represent the built environment
Barnes' work crosses many disciplines
including photography video installation
and combinations thereof his images and
installations have been exhibited
through this country and abroad
including solo shows at the Carnegie
Museum of Art in Pittsburgh the
carpenter center and at Harvard
University the Museum of photographic
Arts in San Diego and the Cranbrook
Brook Museum of Art among others
including one he'll talk about in a
minute he was a recipient of the he was
a recipient of the Rome Prize in
2005-2006 and these the photographs from
Animal Logic come from that that prize
if you haven't gone across the hall and
looked at the exhibit that's in the
gallery 103 across the way the
photographs then please after the
lecture walk across the hall and look at
that that's an exhibit of pieces from
animal logic which is how I got to know
Richards work way before I met him and
bought his book and I'm thrilled he's
here really up let's see his photographs
of the unabomber cabin were featured in
the 2006 Whitney Biennial
and were shown recently an exhibit
called crime unseen at the Museum of
Contemporary photography in Chicago he
received the eyes instead award for
photography
for the unabomber cabin and in 2009 was
the recipient of this Sidman fellowship
of Arts from the University of Michigan
Institute for Humanities in 2011 he
received the Julius Shulman award for
photography and in 2012 he was awarded
the Smithsonian artists fellowship I
think we applied to that fellowship the
same year really talked about that he
recently exhibited a work body work
entitled state of exception which he did
in collaboration with anthropologist
Jason DeLeon based on de Leon's
undocumented migration project research
the installation deals with what
undocumented migrants leave behind as
they make the difficult journey across
the Arizona
Zota Mexico border this sometimes deadly
journey leaves a trail of anonymous
artifacts in its wake creating a huge
debris field that marks this cultural
Exodus north of the border the show
opened at the University of Michigan in
2013 and after exhibitions across the
country ended its run at Parsons New
School in New York in the winter of 2017
his photographs are in the collections
of the Museum of Modern Art the Whitney
Museum of American Art the Metropolitan
Museum of Art the Philadelphia Museum of
Art the Boston Museum of Fine Arts
San Francisco MoMA and the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art among others he has
done numerous books on architecture and
design and works on assignments for such
publications as the New York Times
magazine National Geographic and The New
Yorker please help me to welcome Richard
Barnes
yes so Diane Beauvais we met in Paris at
an exhibition called diorama and diorama
was held at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris
and it was a blockbuster show I have to
say it had everybody from Anselm Kiefer
to mark Diane who I think is lectured
here before and it was quite an event
and Diane and I were opposite of each
other and kind of a it was a bit of a
corridor wasn't it I was a little I know
although I love being in the show I
would have liked to have been out in the
the larger space it wasn't in the back
halls or anything but it was a little
tight anyway that show moved to the
Shirin Museum in Frankfurt and Diane and
I independent of each other both decided
that we wanted to go to Frankfurt and we
met up again so we were reestablished
our relationship which was great and
Frankfurt was a pared down version of
what had shown in Paris but it was it
was great to have this show and to have
a friend come out of that experience so
that was a really wonderful thing to
have happen I'll show some of that work
here
so I'm gonna read occasionally my work
is first and foremost about the
understanding of objects objects in
space and time forensic objects
historical objects ambiguous objects and
the sometimes curious relationship of
the artifact on earth on an
archaeological excavation or from the
storage room of a museum and giving new
meaning through the passage of time and
recontextualization our relationship to
objects artifacts or for that matter
buildings changes as we change and in
this process of evolution that is where
I become engaged as an artist that's
what moves me this is a series of images
I did platinum prints early on from a
project I'll talk about later called
steel rooms and excavations again going
back to this idea of artifacts and the
artefactual I'm also interested in
forensics and taxonomies this is a
museum in Paris
the Museum of comparative anatomy which
event if you've never been to this
museum hardly anybody ever goes there
unfortunately or fortunately it is
fantastic I did a project partially in
this museum in Paris on a series of what
are called Beauchene skulls these are
skulls that have been taken apart by the
insertion into the skull of rice and
started out in the 18th century
Beauchene developed this technique for
splitting the skulls apart as a as as
complete units to use as teaching tools
I found them to be similar to Harold
Edgerton 'he's exploded images of his
stroboscopic photography so I started to
photograph them and find them while
they're very few of them left in the
country in the world
this forms part of one chapter in my
book that Diane mentioned animal logic
that's a detail this is a rabbit and I
just think that there's this wonderful
fetishized way of sort of
looking at this these animals and these
objects that really engaged me I'm also
interested in the layering of history
and memory through static rafi so again
this is another image from still rooms
and excavations this is one it's a
composite image that I put together
there are a few of these in the
exhibition but that that whole idea that
we can look at time and get a sense of
how things are banded I worked in
archaeologically archaeological
excavations in Egypt and I got a real
sense of how history and time are
layered and that has influenced the way
I think about all my work these days
okay
back to this idea of the meta container
or the container containment has fun for
me a very important idea for thinking
about the ways that that we think of the
world and we engage with the world the
meta container being the museum museums
for me are places of of wonder but also
you know somewhat problematic as you'll
see as the talk goes on in terms of how
museums direct people to see certain
things and they they privilege certain
cultures and they devalue others I'm
interested in objects that are ambiguous
this is from Egypt archaeological
excavations that we were involved in
again this idea of ambiguity this whole
idea I did this project in University of
Michigan which I'll talk a little bit
about later on these are casts that have
been created specifically to recreate
replicas of extinct animals in this case
a dinosaur
so the architectural component of my
work is very is very important as I said
this idea of containers and containment
whether it be a
now a shanty town but a working town cut
out of the the rainforest in Manaus
Brazil like this was or we're
specifically the you know bombers cabin
I am somewhat of a hybrid and that I do
both architecture commercially
editorially and I also use it in my own
work this was a commercial project which
I'll speak a little bit about later for
those of you who may not remember and I
always have to annotate my talks because
I get further and further away and
students get younger and younger Ted
Kaczynski was aka the Unabomber for 17
years basically terrorized America by
meticulously creating these bombs and
sending them out to people that he felt
were anti the environment and we're
creating real issues around
technological disaster and where things
were going in that regard so this is
this model if you will this this kind of
dumb cabin that he lived in for 30 years
without running water nor electricity
I'll speak to this in a little while but
I also want to talk about this project
which I also did which I worked on a
project a book which as the architecture
students here I'm sure you all know this
and maybe not even the arca design
students this is Philip Johnson's Glass
House
so I'm interest in this spectrum of
what's happening to the primitive Hut on
one end and the machine in the garden
the iconic modernist statement being
done and I've been putting together an
exhibition that deals with both of these
worlds I also as I was saying I
photograph architecture commercially I'm
just going to show a few of these
projects where I'm cool house the
Seattle library Diller Scofidio Renfro
the broad Museum in Los Angeles
book I've just completed working with
Steven Holl on the Steven halls office
the J.F. Kennedy Center called the reach
another picture of the reach do a lot
for architecture magazines and books
another hall project that I'm currently
involved in this is the Glassell School
of Art across the street from the Museum
of Fine Arts Houston which I'm also
photographing and doing a book on that
as well another view of that project
which is quite wonderful the Menil
drawing institute by Johnson Mark Lee
and this book just came out December
this is an amazing house in Pittsburgh a
collaboration between Walter Gropius and
helped me yes Royer thank you and and
and Boyer so those are the kinds of
projects that I do when I'm not working
on my own work I also go out and I do
things in my backyard which is this is a
deer blind in upstate New York I live in
beacon New York so I've been doing a
project called the long fishtail Creek
because I live on Fishkill Creek this is
a project that I've been working on for
a year or so and I find these odd
architectural events and artifacts that
I bring back to the studio and I've
created a an exhibition to go along with
that and I work conceptually these are
two artists that I met in Rome who are
one is an architect the other as an
artist Ward Shelly and Alex waiter and
Alex and ward did this project at a
place called art oh my it's a temporary
building they lived in it for a month
over the summer and they go back and do
demonstrations you can't get into this
building as you can see you can and this
is how it functions the project is
called reactor they work collaboratively
and it's all about having to think in
terms of the wind
moves this and it doesn't move usually
this fast but it can if the wind is
really intense but you have to
collaborate you have to be on one side
of the other to balance this building or
else it goes down this way that way it's
a seesaw
and I love these guys and everything
they do is about collaboration it's
about working together and so if Alex
have walked all the way down with the
other end they could have gotten out of
the building yeah and then there's a
ladder and I also you know when this
talk came about I was thinking oh you
know the TVA I've done work on the TVA
did a book on the TVA with a Tennessee
and Tim Cole the house whose parents
whose grandfather used to own land that
has was inundated by water they lost a
thousand acres they were giving
compensation but they were never happy
with that and Tim who was very young
would hear stories about his grandfather
and the family hit lore and how
disappointed they were that the
government didn't give them enough money
so he wanted to do a book on this and
the persuasion part is persuading people
to give up land and the design Faculty
of faculties there are the fact that
this is such an amazing project for its
time and so I did these pride did this
more cultural side I photographed the
interior spaces and some of the you know
iconic dam structures but I also did
this essay that dealt with kind of the
way that people inhabit and work within
the the TVA system and recreational I
also spend a lot of time in Butler do
you guys know where Butler is anybody
ever been to Butler Tennessee Butler is
the only town that was inundated by
water but by it it is now under water
and in 1983 Butler writes if that's what
they're called were allowed there's a
there's an old Butler and there's a new
Butler
in 1983 they
the water down and they allowed people
to walk the streets of their former town
and I found that so evocative that I I
kept going back and I would talk to the
authorities and I said what are you
gonna draw the water down again so I can
photograph this and it hasn't happened
since as far as I know but Butler was an
amazing place there's a museum there
that talks all about new Butler and old
Butler and how it evolved and changed
because of the TVA an image I guarded
this image because I was thinking of
Corbusier Corbusier for those of you
don't know as a Swiss architect but he
was very very influenced by his trips
through America and grain silos and the
construction of similar to this building
he was very very brutalist using raw
concrete as a form and I am I was
excited when I saw these because they
reminded me of Corbusier and his his
sort of obsession with with this he is
actually he is actually credited I read
this a couple days ago when I was doing
some research on this he is credited
with using with raw concrete the do
you know about this the first person to
be to use raw concrete in a European
context and it's actually named is that
named after him but he did the name so
those you know long before he was
working he was influenced by the TVA he
was being he was you know adapting this
too to his own sort of work and you know
informed a lot of what he did afterwards
this is a commercial image I show this
because I was taken today when I was
walking around and there was the
Jackalope exhibition which I guess
you're part of and just to show you one
editorial commercial project which gets
into more of my obsessions with not so
much taxidermy I don't like taxidermy
but I like animals and I'll often times
dead animals this is a project I did to
illustrate a story watership down in the
New York Times T Magazine and so I illustrated
it but the interesting thing
about it was Diana and I were talking
about this earlier is these rabbits when
they called me they said okay you're the
guy who
taxidermy we have this assignment for
you we'd like you to recreate this to
illustrate this story of watership down
which I don't know how many people have
read watership down but it was quite a
book and quite quite a wonderful book
I'd read it early on maybe 20 years ago
which is all about this war about
rabbits coming together within this kind
of ecological dark tale about human
beings and what was happening to the
environment so I was chosen nicely
enough to illustrate this piece and they
talked to me and they said well you know
we'll just go out and find some
taxidermy rabbits and you can create
this you can create this environment and
I said wait a second it's not gonna be
that easy we have to conform we have to
conform somewhat to the novel and make
this work you know as a as a story so I
called him a friend of mine who's a
master taxidermist and he said you've
got to use dead rabbits and I said dead
rabbits he said yes well we'll do is
we'll get dead rabbits and we'll thaw
them out if anybody here is a PETA
person I'm apologizing up front so these
rabbits were shipped from Los Angeles to
us he eviscerated them made them into
the forms that I had you know done a
sketch for and we created this
environment so this is an example of my
personal work influencing the commercial
aspect of what I do and that's what's
happened over the years as I'm starting
to find there's this confluence and this
work is one of the most recent examples
of that where assignments will come
because people have seen the personal
work but where does all this begin so it
begins in Egypt as just out of college I
got a job as the archaeological
photographer from the University of
Pennsylvania Yale excavations at a place
called Abydos which is about seven hours
south of Cairo as the as the
architectural photography illogical
photographer you're basically a graduate
student or somebody who's handed a
camera and they say go on and document
the
site well I had been interested in the
whole idea the whole concept of
archeology the whole notion that you
could go to these cultures and dig up
these ancient peoples and find you know
amazing things and about them and my
experience was you know growing up and
going to museums
so they actually participate in these
events in these archaeological
excavations over a three-month period
was really meaningful to me and it began
to put me on a trajectory that I'm still
on you know it's you know these obscure
objects within within objects the
pyramids inverted in this glass globe
this very sort of idea of the
photography and optics finding things
like this TV inside this tomb space
which is a wonderful sort of mixture of
the you know sacred and profane having a
studio where I could have access to all
kinds of different things in terms of
this is a mummified head and creating
these these these compositions with this
amazing light in the studio as the light
bounced off the floor of the desert and
into my studio the after going on
working in you know most of the 1990s on
these archaeological excavations I began
to get interested in what was happening
to the objects that we were extracting
from the ground and where they were
destined for so that took me from the
field into the museum so this begins my
interest in museums as entities museums
as as forms of containment collection
display this was somebody's dog that was
buried with them thinking that it would
be there for eternity
we excavated it and it ended up this is
not the same dog but it ended up into in
the museum
setting another Museum Stanford Museum
of Art which I did a book on as it was
being built the Cairo Museum where a lot
of these images come from and this is
where it all started for me in terms of
looking at museums and how they how they
organize themselves or in this case a
wonderful disorganization it's a
fantastic museum they're getting there
they've just opened a brand new museum
which none of this wonderful 19th
century quality will be there anymore
project from Animal Logic another museum
using Natural History as a good
jumping-off point and then this this was
this catalogue is here if you'd like to
look at it later still rooms and
excavations was a project that concerns
this building this building is exists in
Paris France it was a monument to the
French war debt that Napoleon
established and it is still a monument
to the French war dead but it also
exists in another place and another time
and that is here on the bluffs in
California overlooking the Pacific Ocean
in the 1910s Ott's there was a collector
who had a largest collection of Rodin
sculptures in the world or in in the
States I'm sorry and she needed a place
to house them this building was actually
built for the Pan Pacific Exhibition in
1915 which as you may know these
exhibitions they build buildings and
then they destroy or you know they may
leave one or two in place but they
they're usually made with temporary
materials so they destroy them and move
on well this building got a second a
third life because again this is a model
of the building in Paris France that was
dedicated by Napoleon this building is
built is dedicated to the American war
debt of World War one it was opened in
1924
in 1989 there was an earthquake in San
Francisco you may remember it it was
called the Loma Prieta quake 64 people I
think died in that quake and this
building was damaged heavily in 1992
they decided that they were going to not
demolish this building but they were
going to renovate it so they hired a
name architect Edward Larrabee Barnes no
relation unfortunately and they did this
seismic up ragini and renovation started
it throughout inside in and outside what
they didn't realize was this building
was built on top of a graveyard and in
the history of graves in San Francisco
was interesting because in the 1890s
they stopped allowing people to build
graveyards in San Francisco if you go to
San Francisco the graves are now in a
city to the salt to the South called
coma and there were no more graveyards
people had to disenter the graves and
move them to coma or other places they
were they were forced to do this
well one graveyard escaped that and
that's because it was a potter's field
and there were no they were no next of
kin and it happened to be underneath the
palace of the Legion of Honor I just
returned from Egypt you know I have this
background photographing architecture I
was hired and there in NEA grant to
document the reconstruction of this
building but I was much more interested
in the archaeology that was going on
underneath it so what I did was I was
hired by the museum fine arts museums of
San Francisco themselves to document
this building and at the same time I was
doing this parallel project which was
the archaeology that was being exposed
daily and it was intense
there were a lot of burials there no
names nothing
artifacts but no no no associated names
so nobody knew who these people were
as a ramp thinker so what was happening
on the exterior in terms of aerials and
the excavations was being mirrored by
these sculptures that were wrapped these
chairs that became you know kind of
objects of you know like Sekulow Chur or
like a temporary morgue in the theater
so I started to think you know after
after a year of doing this I didn't know
where I was going with this I was
fulfilling my role as the photographer
of record for the architecture but I was
also doing what I did you know up to
this point in Egypt in other places
photographing the archaeology this is an
image I particularly like these are
buttons and the buttons then were made
of porcelain so they're the only things
that survived all of the clothing had
disappeared
I like the plasticity in this the kind
of interior exterior in and out of the
way it it comes out of the out of the
sand so as I was doing this I started to
think about ways that I could create an
exhibition around this project and again
going back to this idea of I have this
architecture this Monument if you will
and the monument is a you know it's a
Greek temple and we talk about
architecture and we talk about museums
and we often in the past they were
temples to to you know they became that
they become the secular temples of our
day and but here is this structure that
has been borrowed from Paris France
brought to California and and imposed
upon the bluffs overlooking the Pacific
Ocean so I needed to do something with
this with material and well this is
interesting because what happens is in
1920 24 up to 24 they were so kind of
lazy that the Plumber are basically they
put putting pipes through the through
the burials and there's one image that I
have and
plumber you know grabbed a bone and use
it to hold up one of the one of the
pipes of it so you know you can you can
criticize the museum today because I'll
get to that because they didn't want to
really address this project at all but
you had to you have to think about what
was happening at the time some of these
burials you know there were up to 750 to
800 burials that were eventually
disinterred there are hundreds more
still underneath that will await the
next renovation I started to think about
the role of a museum how does it
represent itself who is it
representative of what is that what is
it about creating a collection whose
past is important and whose is
expendable the museum put a press
blanket they wouldn't allow anybody to
come in and you know photograph it no no
I read about this in the New York Times
and then there was nothing until I was
hired and then I was photographing it
all along again going back to this idea
of the forensic this strange accidents
that would happen you know with
preparers and not so strange I think
they did this on purpose and the care in
terms of the collection which every you
know every night every movement was all
choreographed as you know probably from
museums people tend to be very aware of
you know how important these objects are
as opposed to what was happening outside
to the real human beings which we're
being thrown into cardboard boxes sealed
up and moved down to Colma this place
where they have burials now so it was
this kind of juxtaposition this kind of
disconnect that got me thinking about
the role of the museum in our culture
and who is curating
curating for us and what are those
objects those rarified pieces that we
experience in the museum as opposed to
something other in this case it was a
very obvious other these were the people
these were this was the community that
city of San Francisco didn't care about
so they were allowed just to go away no
sense of history no sense of no
acknowledgement of this culture and you
know to me as a you know photographer as
a person who'd worked in on
archaeological excavations who is
sensitive to patrimony and where people
came from and where they're called tell
our culture evolved and who these people
might be it was to put it mildly
somewhat offensive these are objects
this is the first slide I showed these
are the objects that were found watch
spring shoe very simple stuff I created
this installation using the objects I
printed them on glass and glass is a
really interesting material because glass
can be very fragile and disappear broken
or in the right conditions that could
last forever so I decided that I wanted
glass to be glass positives and I made
these betweens if you will to hold these
glass plates this is an installation at
the architectural league in New York
another installation the museum of in
San Diego photographic museum I decided
to blow that one image up as the
signature image to 9 by 14 feet
so when I was finished with these
projects I went to the to the cure head
curator and also the director of the
museum because they came by my studio
because they wanted to see the
architectural documentation and I showed
dutifully showed them that and they were
fine with it it all looked good they're
gonna use it and all their publications
and things and then they said you know I
have another body of work that I'd like
to show you and that's when I began to
talk about this and I said I really
would like I really think that we should
do an exhibition in that space you know
I was a little presumptuous of me to be
telling a museum that that's where I
thought it should go but they kind of
looked at it and they were like really
you did all this and they were kind of
taken aback to say the least
and I said okay well you know I'm giving
you guys first right of refusal that you
can take this on and we can do an
exhibition and possibly do it in the
space that these burials came out of is
kind of honoring this other culture they
wanted none of it it was too hot to
handle they basically said we cannot you
know we cannot do that they wrote me a
letter and they said but you're welcome
to take it wherever you want which was
very nice of them because I did and it
traveled across the country and five
different venues and you know it was for
me it was very gratifying to actually
get this work out there but again going
back to this idea of commercial
editorial reinforcing a project like
this that to me was kind of a really
great thing and if any of you are
photography students here or
photographers you know access is all
important I would have never gotten
access to this place to do this work
Animal Logic so after working on still
rooms and excavations I decided that I
really wanted to continue along this
vein of music musial adji and thinking
about the museum as a as a meta
container and looking at how museums are
formed our collections are formed
display techniques
the diorama in particular so I happened
this is this is the furthest is the
image that got me going on this project
I was living in San Francisco and I had
a job within the Academy of Sciences and
I haven't been walking to wherever I was
going to be photographing and I walked
by this and I thought this is amazing
you know that guy up there and then you
know painting this mural and I talked to
him and I said what's going on he said
there was a fire and they were
renovating the space and so I I said I
said why I'd like to talk to somebody
about possibly coming back and
photographing that and he gave me the
name of the person when I came back the
next day and I started to think about
the diorama as a as an object as a
container and I began seeking out
museums that were either renovating
their dioramas destroying them because
dioramas are somewhat suspect you know
first of all they're made with really
toxic materials arsenic and things like
that to preserve the animals and I just
thought I have to you know I have to
find out more about this I'm interested
in the theater I'm interested in you
know there's a famous play slash movie
called the dresser and it's all about
activity that takes place on the other
side of the screen if you will in the
wings that to me is very exciting
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead by
Tom Stoppard is an amazing play because
it all takes place offstage this is all
taking place offstage so for me as a you
know a person interested in theater and
the whole idea of penetrating the
proscenium going beyond the stage into
the stage was really important so I
started to seek out places animals this
is this is the lunch room in the
Fragonard museum in paris which i think
is a great exhibit in the mushroom you
know the kind of implied violence that
goes on this was the removal of a
diorama because of videos very chemicals
that I was talking about this was in
Rome I
2005 I applied  as Dianne alluded to I
applied for the Rome prize to finish
this book this body of work called
animal logic and by nicely enough I I
was able I got the project I got the
Commission I got the prize and I went
and finished the book in Rome this is a
high school called the toss of High
School in Rome these are some of the
images that are outside you know
including the curators I would be
photographing kind of stealthily looking
around and I would go up and set up my
camera and all this was done in film
this is a few years ago so and you know
the exposures were up to 45 seconds long
and I would go into these spaces and
these people would say oh do you want us
to get out of the way so you can take
the photograph or the diorama and I'd
say no no it's it's you that I want in
the image because of that idea that as I
said the Presidium being pierced that
these actors become as important as the
animals that are going to be put back in
or taken away and the whole idea of
reanimation you know that we go out into
nature and we call these animals and
then we reanimate them to put them on
display is wonderfully perverse and I
sort of like thought this is this is a
place I think I can go I'm sure you feel
the same way so this is a Museum in
Ottawa Canada this is one of my favorite
museums because that that sense of the
favorite favorite sense of space because
it's just endless this guy was a scene
painter and again including all of that
that the the implication the kind of
Christian implication iconography of
those blue crosses just sort of put up
there you know that that morning as a
backdrop to preserve the paintings all
of those accidental things were very
engaging exciting for me
you know the delicacy of this big guy in
this little this little rabbit in you
know it's no scene with his t-shirt when
I was at the Smithsonian this is how
this Smithsonian artists research
fellowship began I I got access to
photograph in the stacks there's an
off-site facility outside of MIT and
Maryland and it's it's quite striking
they wonder but now it's a very banal
building but in the deepest deepest
basement are these animals that have
been taken off the floor at the
Smithsonian Museum itself so I they said
they just said do what you want to do
you know you can move these things
around you can do whatever you want so I
did and I set up a very crude lighting
system and I photographed these these
animals that you know are there's a
curator who actually was part of my
Smithsonian grant when I showed her to
these she said these animals are twice
dead you know they've been killed
they've been culled from nature and then
they've been put in deep storage
probably because they're not
high-quality mouths or they didn't make
the grade and now they're dead again so
I thought that was a nice kind of
observation on her part and I really
like the apparatus you know not that the
people who are putting these together
could care less about you know it's a
little like that woman who that sure
they very consciously put that in front
of her eyes these were just people who
are looking at you know how do we secure
this as as as well as possible suspended
animation
so doing this work thinking about it
working within the confines of Natural
History Museum's
and not that there's a lot of
photographers have worked within Natural
History installations or museums and you
know everybody does it a little
differently mark died on more sculptural
Sugimoto I don't know if you know him he
did a whole series on both wax museums
and also animals in the national mystery
Museum in New York there's a whole bunch
of them my take was to work with these
places that were undergoing renovation
and and renewal and again goes back to
this whole idea of architecture and
containment
this was the installation at the
Cranbrook Museum of Art I'll just go
through these quickly I had access to
all of their they have a Natural History
Museum there and all of these these
taxidermy heads that you see in Reverse
with shadows clean out on the wall these
were all done at Cranbrook in this
installation which was a pretty great
space to be able to work with so as as
time moved on after after the still
rooms and excavations piece I started to
think about what it meant to do
installations so I've done more and more
installation work in relationship to the
photography that I do this is actually
this is the actual cover of my book the
dust jacket I got a double dust jacket
because Princeton Architectural press
who published this didn't want to use a
black and white cover even though this
month my wife is a designer designed
this even though this was our first
choice was to do this they said Oh black
and white it will never sell we said
okay then we'll go to the second we'll
do what you saw which was the first
cover which is actually the cover
underneath the cover so we got our way
with both the black and white cover and
a color cover and if they wanted to they
could just take off the black-and-white
cover so while I was in Rome waiting to
get access to museums and various other
places to photograph these dioramas or
in the in the stacks I you know I was
frustrated because the Italians take
forever to make a decision and it's it's
all caught up in bureaucracy I happen to
notice that there was this phenomenon
every evening of these smudges in the
sky and I didn't quite know what they
were in the beginning but then it turned
out that these were birds
these were starlings and you see that
here you see it in America but you never
I don't think you do see it at this kind
of
scale so I went with my friend Alex who
was the creator of that reactor house
and created this body of work which
became part of animal logic and these
are just a few examples from that book
so starlings used to go all the way to
Africa in the winter they used to
migrate they don't migrate that far
anymore they found that it's it's warmer
because of global warming and they
congregate in the Campania the
countryside outside of Rome and every
night for some reason probably - because
it's warmer and to avoid predation they
come in in huge masses and they do this
amazing way you've probably seen it in
miniature baby they do this amazing
configuration in the sky that's just to
me it was like I was awestruck you know
I just thought this is this is fantastic
I found out later we were talking about
this yesterday that science tests
ornithologist are studying these forms
to figure out why these birds do this
and why they don't hit each other and
they're applying it to hurting mentality
in human beings so whenever I can
whenever I can work with somebody who's
outside of my field like I met an
ornithologist on site here and we
started to work together that's great
when I work with a paleontologist that's
a wonderful thing so I think different
disciplines working with architects is
fantastic these are just some of the
images from my book the installation
included a four-channel video piece a
40-minute loop of the birds coming into
the city and filling the sky this is a
this is in the beginning but eventually
this becomes a whirling mass of of
activity and kind of aggregate material
and that was that's Alex's part of this
project so we've shown this quite a few
times and I still exhibit the still
photography as well but Alex and I
collaborate this is the Stanford or the
Cranbrook show which we collaborated on
there on this piece so that piece has
had numerous installations and
generations another part the last
chapter in animal logic is on a
collection of bird nests after I'd done
the Unabomber cabin I didn't quite know
where to go with my work and a friend of
mine said oh you know why should photo
got birds nests and birds nests why
would I do that and he said because
they're fascinating and I said okay what
I did was I sought out I found a place
that has the largest collection of birds
nests in the world not the world in the
States and it's in a kind of industrial
park in Cabrillo California and I sought
out animals or birds that actually took
from us what we throw away and created
their homes or their nests of their in
habitation and this one is made from
obviously Easter grass and while I was
doing research for this project I didn't
you can see this there's a very subtle
and this is actually because it's light
coming through is actually showing that
pretty well there is a subtle pattern on
the other side so while I was
researching this I started to get
interested in wallpaper and I realized
that wallpaper pastoral scenes and
scenes with birds are the most
predominant images on wallpaper
throughout history so I thought well
isn't that an interesting inversion the
birds are taking what we throw away and
making these nests and we are enclosing
our interiors with these images of birds
so that was the impetus for that and
nobody knows this when they go to the
show is just my sort of conceptual
conceit I guess you will but each one of
these has a a backdrop of these birds
and the shapes were just wonderful you
know incredible what nature does
and a lot of these birds had gone
extinct by the time I got to their nests
in this collection they were gone the
birds themselves they no longer existed
lined with some kind of insulation
material this is the Alfred Hitchcock
bird eucalyptus
okay one more project after I worked at
the University of Michigan when I
started like I got this Sidman
fellowship for the Arts in 2010-2011 and
I was interested in creating an
installation so I got access to the
Ruthven Museum which is a Museum of
Anthropology on the top floor to
ornithology to ik the ology to you when
to get to the bottom floor it's
paleontology so it's a wonderful sort of
example of you know high art being human
anthropology and the ground level where
this guy existed I saw this just sitting
there in this museum and I said I got to
do something with that so I decided to
use it in this in this in this
installation but before I did that I was
researching replication and the whole
idea this is not an actual this is a
whale whales used to have appendages
whales went the other way instead of
coming from the water of the sea onto
land they went backwards
they went into land you can still see
appendages on whales that is a whale
called my fetus and it's probably 45 to
80 million years old
excavated from what used to be the
Tethys sea and is now is now a gyp t'
the fiim in egypt so this idea about you
know the University of Michigan was
replicating these they had found this
they decided that they wanted to
replicate it and this is the prod this
is their replication project process the
red reddish color images are the actual
bones and the white ones are the
replication so what they're doing is
they are taking this actual object which
used to be bone
Stone and replicating it into resin and
silicone so it's that kind of you know
change of materials changing through
time and the whole idea of what a
facsimile is how we use it how we think
about it and this is a this is a rib
from a mastodon this is a this is
another one of the whales skull and
again going back to this idea of the
mold the mold becomes a kind of you know
it's something that it the negative in
space for me is I'd find it really
exciting attractive and weird and the
fact that these looked like they were
made out of flesh was it was just very I
don't know it just moved me to think
about replication and authenticity and
how things become something other over
time these are this is a complete
Mastodon skeleton in the basement and I
kind of disorganized at the University
of Michigan you know I I look at this
print and I have this this image and I
think of Francis Bacon but I also think
of bacon bacon so this is that master
down this is that other whale called the
basilar best basilosaurus which is 65
million years ago and that's the one
that was on the table this is a
completely rendered setup so the molds
became as important for me in this
exhibition as the objects themselves the
real fossils and I created this
exhibition around that while I was there
I also got access to some objects that
are on this table in the foreground
these are American Indian reproductions
of various stone tools and the
Smithsonian had been making stone tools
since the 1930
and sending them to various institutions
who didn't have a collection so they
would use them either to exhibit them or
they would use them in classes to look
at them think about them talk about them
I got access to these because they were
being thrown away and the idea that you
know you would take these they're
plaster casts they have no value but
they were being tossed so I got access
to these and I kept them in my studio
for about seven years and and then I did
another exhibition in 2017 using these
very same objects bringing them back to
the University of Michigan in this
project which we called object lessons
and it was in this museum that I was
talking about that we did the exhibition
in or the or the anthropology museum
that we had got the access to the
paleontological project that I showed
these in so for me this piece is called
dia session RIA session what I did is I
wanted to kind of give them another life
so I mounted them on a precious material
this is gold leaf and again simple
simple simple objects that have been
given this upgrade if you will and I had
the whole idea of dia sessioning
something I've really talked about that
much and then reassessing something was
really the whole idea of dia sessioning
an object from a collection is a really
interesting phenomenon the fact that
it's gotten to the place where it's in
the collection and then being recession
by myself back into the museum a little
bit about the Unabomber and then I
promise you will be done an assignment
assignment from the New York Times the
first assignment I ever did for them the
museum the magazine itself I was told by
I was asked if I could send my portfolio
back to New York I was living in San
Francisco at the time Ted Kaczynski aka
the Unabomber as I said before this is
his cabin I was not told what the
assignment was I was just
to send back pictures of warehouses and
I said well I may have a few warehouses
in my portfolio so I found something
sent them back and they said okay the
project is to photograph the Unabomber
is cabin
okay the Unabomber camera is an iconic
object as stated it is so simple so
direct so dumb in certain ways that it
has this presence that is representative
of you know rural self-sufficiency gone
with the Unabomber horribly awry that
was fascinating to me so I went to this
facility which was on an Air Force Base
this was an FBI facility they were
holding this cabin for his trial his
trial was going to start in a few months
I walked into this with a friend of mine
who actually was a psychologist and did
his dissertation on the  unabombers
manifesto I walked into this room in
this space and we both remarked on how
nice the space was and then we ended up
in the back room with all this junk and
the Unabomber is Kevin pushed against a
wall and I thought what are we gonna do
here so we got permission to cut a hole
in the wall and put the cabin on wheels
and move it into this space you know it
took some some negotiation and some foot
spa but we were able to do it and it
worked you know it worked as both an
object as both an art object
you know people looked at this and they
thought oh this is an art object no no
it's something else
it's the unabomber cabin and for me
that's when when a when a project works
on multiple levels when a project has
multiple levels then it's working this
project worked as I said before this is
the Glass House I got permission to
photograph the Glass House to do a book
in conjunction with an artist named
Fujiko nakiya this is all fake fog this
is
Fujiko nakiya only works with fog she's
worked all over the world and she was
invited
to come and basically obscure the
glasshouse
so I bet I began to think about my
Unabomber project and the kind of hidden
aspect of his life in this cabin that
was you know was so obscure and so kind
of and not desperate but it was just
sort of not it was it was it was very
poignant in terms of his his needs his
energies his aspect of an analysis of
culture our culture and this wonderful
sort of modernist aesthetic which is the
opposite it's open it's it's it's all
completely revealed everything is there
for you and I thought why not create an
exhibition that juxtaposes both of these
so I did this book took the Unabomber
scabbing I have not actually realized
this exhibition yet primarily because my
galleries don't understand what I'm
trying to do but I treated the cabin as
mugshots
so I photographed them that first shot
you saw was to me looked like it could
have been in an art gallery and
interrogation space but I also wanted to
think about this as a as forensic Lee as
a mugshot so I created this this quadric
with four different views of the cabin
and then I tried to convince the New
York Times to send me back to the site
where the Unabomber is Kevin came from
which was in Lincoln Montana and they
were I said we can do a diptych of the
cabin here juxtapose with the with this
site here and they were like what well
for two why would we do that they're
journalists they don't understand and so
I went back myself and I photographed
this place in the in the woods outside
of Lincoln Montana and what's
interesting about this site is the FBI
has gone in and they've put a chain-link
fence around nothing because the cabin
has been
lifted and taken away with sign saying
danger do not enter no trespassing
and you know the kind of weird
juxtaposition conceptualization of this
you know sort of like what used to be
there and the image in the warehouse for
me was a logical kind of diptych and
that's how it appears in the exhibition
so five years later I got a call from
People magazine I don't usually work for
People magazine so I was kind of
surprised that they would be calling me
because I think of them as doing
portraits and they said oh we've got
access to the Unabomber scavenger
remember your images and we'd like to
send you back to we photograph it
because they're going to destroy it
which will realistically destroy it so I
went there with my assistant who's up
there on the on the right-hand side
thinking I could recreate the mugshot
idea with the black cloth not realizing
perspective and that you'd need a huge
black claw this is this is pretty
digital so I'm thinking about doing this
all with four by five I got four by five
I'm right in the middle so I'm I'm that
I'm this guy right here setting up with
a four by five camera photographing
everybody else and I forgot who took
this picture behind me but I really
liked the image and so they were going
to have these people come and destroy
the cabin while we were photographing it
but then this person who was
orchestrating this whole thing said well
the cabins got a reprieve Ted's
girlfriend has bought the cabin
so these news people were really upset
they were like we came down here we set
up we've been here for hours and
nothing's gonna happen
so everybody left except my assistant
John and myself and we sat there with
the cabin not knowing what to do I mean
I say to him now I just saw him last
week and I said you know if I was a real
artist I would have lit that cabin on
fire and photographed it while I was
going up in flames probably would have
been arrested but it's all right
in 2015 I got access to the you know
bombers artifacts of which these are
some of them this is a mask I don't know
if you ever actually wore this but all
these are these are all taken from the
FBI these were all these were all
auctions auctioned off to the highest
bidders and somebody called me at some
point said I really would like to buy
the diptych and I said by the way I have
this collection of objects that I bought
on line at the auction and I he said
would you like to photograph them I said
sure so I did this series of images of
these objects that he wore and used this
is a shovel blade that he made into a
wrench very invented this man you know
no matter what you think of Ted
Kaczynski he was a genius on a certain
level these were his shoes which he put
a false bottom on so people couldn't
trace him rope you know he was obviously
a genius because crazy also don't don't
subscribe to the means but some of his
ideas were pretty remarkable and Vail
I'll go through really quickly Vail is a
look at this icon of modernism done with
you know this having this other material
being fall
and I just you know the this house has
been photographed by every architectural
photographer and lots of other artists
James Welling probably the most
interesting important one ad infinitum
then I got access to it when it was when
it was bailed and did this book project
so I like the idea of the way that
things were hidden
hidden at times and then it would reveal
itself and then it would hide it again
and I thought there's got to be some way
to connect these two structures
and there is one more project okay the
last one I'll go through this quickly
Diane mentioned Jason de Leon Jason is
an anthropologist of works of the
University of Michigan he runs this
program called the the migration project
the undocumented migration project and
what he does is he goes down with a
group of students to the Arizona border
excuse me I'm losing my voice any
photographs or photographs I
photographed he collects objects that
migrants have deposited in the desert
after they crossed the border so they've
made this perilous journey into America
oftentimes not realizing that they're in
the middle of the Sonora Desert which is
some of the harshest landscape in the
country in the world and they still have
miles and miles to go so unfortunately
oftentimes they die and Jason has been
collecting these objects myself in my
curator friend Amanda Zhu GLIAC
from the University of Michigan created
this exhibition using hundreds of
backpacks this is an example of the way
it was installed these backpacks are
wonderful because they're very they're
they it's globalism and with a big G if
you will so you have everything from
Homer Simpson - Bart Simpson - little
Dora and you know all of these you know
Mickey Mouse all of these brands are
being appropriate they're all made in
China of course maybe some of them are
made in other countries so we created
this installation we did we photographed
exhibitions or we photographed the
objects artifacts where we could find
them when we went on these trips down to
the border but the most compelling part
of all this was this series that I
photographed in the morgue in Pima
Arizona
are in Tucson Arizona and these were
people that had died crossing the border
these were their the last things they
carried so we were able to get access to
these and photographed them in the bags
and create this these light boxes as
part of the exhibition again going back
to the simple objects that were in the
past tense present present tense past
future exhibition these were very simple
objects the things that you would need
to survive money cell phone charger as
they crossed they would the border into
Arizona we were in southern Arizona they
were told to keep this peak to it to the
right if it got to their left they would
die because they couldn't make it
well that peak Bob Walkowiak Ribera
became part of the culture it was a
water bottle label it was a direction it
was a Wayfinder for them and they would
use that as a way of guiding themselves
and this is this is Jason as an
anthropologist this is things that he
you know had researched well in the
desert with these students they found a
body and that body was a woman Maria she
was Guatemalan on she was Ecuadorian and
you know they came upon this body the
woman had been dead for a few days and
the students were like whoa this is
something we didn't anticipate when we
were going off on our summer you know
archaeologic although Jason told them so
to honor Maria they created these
tattoos and these tattoos are the babaçu
vera peak and also the coordinates of
where they found Maria so these students
were moved to do this and I created this
as part of the exhibition the
says I don't have a picture of the foot
but it's the same it's the same
demarcation these tires were used by the
the what's the name of the security
force out there I've forgotten thank you
the Border Patrol to wipe down the sand
so they could come back and see tracks
we got it we got one of those and
brought it up for the exhibition the
installation also incorporated a video
the video was essentially photographs
from a video of me photographing the
backpacks as we were walking across it
this is the installation at Parsons and
this is how
it functioned
this is one of three videos in the show
so no matter what you think what your
politics are to me when I first heard
about this project I thought nobody
should be nobody should be dying in the
desert no matter what you think and that
was what the motivator for us to get
this work out there and to talk about it
and to say you know this should not be
happening so that's how I will end
things thank you
does anybody have any questions and you
need to speak into the mic when you have
a question so it could be recorded I was
struck at the beginning when you were
talking about the work in Egypt and your
initial photographic work thinking of
someone like Francis Frith but as you
proceeded to talk about your work the
connections between the history of
photography and the history of science
are very connected and much of your work
in addresses context in which science is
the subject of your work could you speak
to maybe the ways that science and art
tell similar but different kinds of
truths well I would say that I'm
interested in science as a I'm
interested in disciplines within the
rubric of science so as I said working
with ornithologists working with
paleontologists working with different
disciplines for me engages my brain in a
whole different way than the art
practice and I didn't talk about this
but a lot of my work comes out of this
documentary tradition things start out
as documents and then if they're working
they're augmented and they become
something else
so the science part of it is being
we you know the art part of it is being
reinforced by the science and that's
where I think these two things for me
and dovetail and really come together
does that answer your question yes this
is very simple did you ever have a
chance to see the inside of the
Unabomber cabin that it was part of that
five year later People magazine tour I
got access to the Unabomber camp because
they wouldn't let me photograph it I saw
it I could look through the windows when
I first photographed it but they said
absolutely no photographs on the inside
so five years later they said we got
access to the inside you can photograph
that I don't include any of those
because the FBI stripped it completely
there was nothing there I have
photographs of it I just don't include
them in that exhibition all right now
talk it's you into photography started I
started out as a printmaker and didn't
see a future there
you've done fine I serve as a printmaker
the art department I had become
interested in photography and wanting to
you know I realized I could make a
living photographing you know my first
job out of college was I had my own
shift on a daily newspaper and I had a
car that I would drive around it was
supplied by the with a police radio and
I was a photojournalist I was the only
part of Juris the other ones used to
laugh at me you're the only
photojournalist that actually carries a
tripod with him because that's not a
thing that you do so that's the
beginning that for the printmaking
program that I was in didn't offer
photographic print banking I didn't know
where to go in within I was at Berkeley
I didn't know where to take it I wanted
to do photography I looked around the
only place that offered a photographic
degree was the journalism department so
my degree is started out as an art major
my degree is actually in journalism
which has helped me going back to this
idea of access you know being able to
talk your way into something that's what
journalists do any other questions
first of all thank you that that was
amazing I want to be a photographer
early early on you you mentioned that
whom the unabomber cabin was a model and
I'm curious about that and I was
thinking you were you were getting at
you know the relationship between
immediacy and abstraction like how an
object becomes a model for something
else you know for me everything starts
out historically and so the unabomber
cabin is is an example of this like I
said this kind of it's like a child's
drawing or a child structure blown up to
full scale and it has a historical sense
in it in terms of it relates back to
architectural history in terms of the
primitive Hut and that to me is really
interesting and I don't know if that
answers your question about it being a
model and you're talking about a
conceptual model
okay I some maybe maybe I'm not in
understanding what model needs in this
context mean and the actual model or a
conceptual model okay III you know just
like don't know if I can answer that
question right now
I don't I think of the work as being
connected it's a continuum I mean you
know death runs throughout everything I
do
except for maybe murmur and the bird's
nest but the bird's nest even do so
there's there's a there's something
there's there's there's subjects there
are things that I continue to touch on
the model I think I'm talking about in
the abstraction the idea of abstraction
is the fact that most of my work deals
with containment on some level
everything is about containment does
that well we can talk about at dinner
thank you
