ARTS ENCORE
Photosynthesis Solution
Vegan artist turns to the sun to avoid using animal products BY ELIZABETH KERLIKOWSKE
Brian Powers
J
oe Smigiel likes to wear suspenders, but his suspenders, unlike most, do not have a leather triangle where the straps cross in back. His are naked because, from his suspenders to the soles of his canvas shoes, Smigiel is a vegan. Like most vegans, who do not eat or use animal products, Smigiel (rhymes with “eagle”) does not want to be a part of causing any animal’s suffering. “After the best steak dinner of my life, I went home and randomly watched a YouTube video about slaughterhouses and decided to be a vegetarian," he says. “That lasted 10 days.” After he investigated even “good” farms, he says, their practices made him decide to “go all the way to vegan.” But being vegan was a challenge when it came to his artistic life as a photographer. Smigiel is an educational specialist at Kalamazoo Valley Community College who has taught photography and digital imaging as well as geology. Before becoming vegan, he, like most photographers, used film having a gelatin solution, and gelatin is derived from the hooves, bones and connective tissue of animals. In fact, gelatin is so important to photography that George Eastman, founder of the Eastman Kodak Co., had the Peabody Gelatin Factory, a slaughterhouse, built right next door to his photography plant in Rochester, New York, so that the plant would always have a ready source of gelatin.
Above: Artist and photographer Joel Smigiel holds one of his favorite cyanotypes of three visually impaired boys he met while working at a camp. Top left: A vegan, Smigiel’s suspenders don’t have the traditional leather patch where the straps cross. Right: Smigiel makes cyanotypes on different types of paper to show what can be done.
34 | ENCORE OCTOBER 2019