“ WE THINK PHOTOS ARE DOCUMENTS OF REALITY BUT IN FACT THE CAMERA LIES. THERE IS A HAND BEHIND THE CAMERA THAT STAGES AND FRAMES. WE HAVE LOFTY GOALS FOR OUR PHOTOGRAPHS, BUT THEY DO NOT DEPICT THE WORLD AS IT REALLY IS.”
“Utopos (Henry Hall Building)”, 2015, Folded Archival Pigment Print, 32x88 inches
riot at the exact moment when the students were throwing IBM cards out of the window. Jessica overlaid colour onto the image and then printed the large 82"x 32” image into eight prints and eight sections. She cut and trimmed each print and folded them into equal lateral triangles. She says, “From these organic shapes, I was able to fold and shape the prints and then pin them directly onto the wall.” Jessica’s main photographic interest is architecture and space, which she shoots with medium format film. She says, “There is a magic to the older processes, which is why there are young artists turning to them.” Jessica seeks out old buildings in Toronto and Montreal, looking for the light and shadows on what she calls sixties and seventies Brutalist architecture, buildings that represent a utopian time and a failed vision of the future. “Toronto has a lot of ugly buildings,” she says with a laugh. “The new city hall, the CN Tower, the Gardiner Expressway; buildings that others deem ugly have a history, a different agenda.” Her obsession with buildings is fraught with both positive and negative emotions. “I am trying to marry the idea of being enamoured with and repulsed by them simultaneously,” she says. “I feel destabilized and that is why I like to distort my images.”
Jessica manipulates most of her images manually in her studio, adding shadows and strange distortions, with the end goal of finding the hidden beauty in buildings others don’t find. She goes through a series of emotions, including frustration, anger, reverence, and wonder, when trying to get at something that a photograph is not actualizing for her. “At a certain point in my practice I was steeped in others’ photography, how beautiful and holy their images were. It was only when I gave myself permission not to create something beautiful, to move on from holding a photograph as holy, that I could create something beautiful out of something I destroyed.” Jessica says, “That is not going to work for everyone; it is a niche I have found for myself.” Jessica’s advice for aspiring photographers is to read Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes (1980) and On Photography by Susan Sontag (1973). Barthes explores the nature and essence of photography, and Sontag studies the force of photographic images that are inserted between experience and reality. She also advises amateur and professional photographers not to get into their own heads too much: to step away from their thoughts and start using their hands. “Not making work is not the solution to not making work. That is the best advice I can give anyone,” she says. “Money should not be your primary goal; just make the work you want to make.”
jessicathalmann.com photo ED 15
