Crystal Hagar

Fear and Faith

My work revolves around image making as well as the manipulation and obstruction of images through various methods. It is an ongoing exploration and play that involves pushing past the traditional definition of what a photograph is, and what it means to take part in such an action. I bring in elements outside of the traditional photographic practice and combine them with photographic prints as a way to create imagery that is iconoclastic on a technical, historical, and personal level.

In Fear and Faith I’ve used my own images as well as appropriated images of Modernist style photographers such as Edward Weston, Walker Evans, and Alfred Stieglitz, combined with various painting techniques eventually developing into an Abstract Expressionist approach, to convey an iconoclastic breaking away of beliefs. This refers to both traditional photographic and artistic beliefs as well as an internal conflict with myself and my ability to stray from my perfectionist state of mind. After feeling I had confined myself to a set of technical and aesthetic rules that I had adopted almost exclusively from Modernist photographers’ photographs, I became inspired by the idea of obstructing these images and began combining these two opposite ways of creation by painting over them. After my initial experimentation with works involving my own photographs such as those seen in the Genesis and Evolution prints, I became highly inspired by the Abstract Expressionist movement because it jumped out as the exact opposite of this highly mechanical way of creating, I was still subconsciously clinging to. Then came the Rebirth prints where I began to use the appropriated images and move away from the more mechanical brush strokes. An additional aspect incorporated into this work is the process of scanning, reprinting, and repainting the images. This process brings them further away from the original source, symbolizing moving further away from the technical aspects of the original photographs. Meanwhile, the “real” paint strokes remain nearly indistinguishable from the printed ones. These works are not made as a defacement of the original images or an attack on their creators, but rather as a way to symbolize an evolution of the photographic medium, art in general, and freeing myself of my creative constraints. (L) Evolution (3)

Acrylic on archival pigment print 2021 (R) Rebirth (Stieglitz) Acrylic on archival pigment print