Black & White to Color

Production Notes

1978

78 3” X 5” Photographs
GRID: 13 Rows X 6 Photographs Per Row

During the late 1970s and early 1980's I made a series of photographic and sculptural works that explored ways of representing a range of essential cinematic "ideas," outside of conventional cinematic grammar. I made paper films -- some of them found objects re-imagined -- photographic collages, assemblages of cardboard and other materials, and a wide range of other conceptual works, all in search of alternative ways of expressing my love of cinema without necessarily making (actual) films.

The sequence of images in BLACK AND WHITE TO COLOR is edited from thousands of found 3” X 5” found amateur photographs that had been rejected by an commercial photo laboratory because of some mistake by the photographer -- or a flaw in the chemical processing of the image. The small black rectangle on each photograph is the laboratory’s way of assuring that the rejected photograph is never sold.

CITY FILM STRIPS, shot in Norman, Oklahoma in 1978, is focused on the abstract geometry of the street – the textures, lines, arrows, signs, symbols – and other found paintings – that form the graphic lexicon of the urban landscape.