Inhabited Depths: A Craft Essay on Collage Work
Overall, my artistic directions are informed by photo-artists Toshiko
Okanoue, Francesca Woodman, Deborah Turbeville, and especially Katrien
De Blauwer.
The motivation behind each collage is approximately the same: I look to
create with the intention they become a bit veiled, reassembled into new
narratives from intimate yet anonymous image fragments suggestive of
“When I assemble the photos, I note how they’re drawn toward each other
in an almost unconscious way — almost like a coincidence.”
emotional pathos — like a shadow text, or understated intimations. This is
also the reason faces are obscured; not to hide identity, but to universalize
the images from the photographic language of the past: they are not one
person, but potentially all people. I like how the photos come together to
render something the viewer may envision obliquely, intuitive perception; or
subconsciously, like light glinting off an impalpable surface.
Yet, it is also the case that the collages speak therapeutically to me,
mirroring or illustrating Carl Jung’s concept of the Anima: the female part of
the male psyche — sensual, often implicit female archetypes where
allegories give shape to dreamscapes of the unconscious, even as the faint
image of the female reflects an abstracted, fluid persona. As such my
intents touch upon transgender femininity. There are, therefore,
confessional elements to the collages — something charged with my own
emotions, like auteur cinema, yet not something so buried in my own
psyche and unconscious that viewers can’t see some of themselves in
them. I believe in a touch of sensuality mainly achieved through an
indirectness that does not eclipse wider considerations of human
physicality. Thus nudity in the collages is intended to be subtle in its
touches of eros and alienation, even in an abstract sense.
So there is no resolved narrative, per se, as the viewer makes their own
associations that will often reflect themselves in unintended or random
ways through the speculative interplay of shapes — their own storyboards,
the photographic fragments forming an interplay of oppositions. Even if the
narratives beg the abstruse, I like to hint indirectly at the unseen and internal.
Just as Francesca Woodman spoke of her images not as records
of reality, but as places for viewers to dream in (Magdalene Kearney, et. al,
Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron — Portraits to Dream
In. National Portrait Gallery, London, no date. p 13.) And like Deborah
Turbeville, I like creating photographic fictions that emerge from the
assembling of collages, to evoke moods, not plots. Mine is an art in
fragmentary discourses. Hence the reason some pieces are given
conversational fragments as titles. Like Deborah Turbeville, I like creating
photographic fictions. Hence the reason some pieces are given
conversational fragments as titles — like found letters, written to someone
unnamed. Moreover, I look to enhance the fragmentary approach by using
colored backgrounds that exhibit torn or frayed edges, subtly adding to
graphic intensity. That is, a kind of cinematic disruption. Overall, as a
mainly a poet, what I aim for in these collages is what Keats called
“negative capability”, that uncertainty, obscurity, or doubt without any
reaching for resolutions. I like what New York artist Willa Nasatir said about
her work, that “I’m happy that my work still feels mysterious to me, that it
doesn’t feel solved or like I’ve reached the edges, the contours of the
thing.” (Cultured Magazine Nov/Dec/Jan 2023 / 2024, p. 191). What Italian
Surrealist de Chirico identified as “inhabited depth” reminds us that what is
disturbing about a calm sea is not the distance from us to the ocean floor,
but what lurks unknown at the bottom. As Francesca Woodman stated
about her images, “I’m interested in the way that people relate to space.
The best way to do this is to depict their interactions to the boundaries of
these spaces.”
When I assemble the photos, I note how they’re drawn toward each other
in an almost unconscious way — almost like a coincidence. Or perhaps
“simply by the grace of intuition”, as Diana Stoll once said of Henri Cartier-
Bresson’s photography (Aperture Conversations __ 1985 to Present, p.
41). The photos often sit on my worktable for months before my mind’s eye
catches them and begins to render a visual language from these apparently
disparate or disjointed pieces. I also seek a resonance between photos that
indicate interrupted movements, or similar poses. And in this vein, there’s a
touch of dadaism’s definition of collages as distorting the original purposes
and ordinary meanings of the assembled images.
Oftentimes, a color presents itself as a border to accent something I can’t
quite identify except to say they reflect or implicate subtle emotions, or
even pathos. One collage calls for a blue strip of construction paper for the
background, or fringes of the joined photos, while another calls for red.
Sometimes hints of color are applied through pastels chalk or colored
pencils. Color can accentuate and obscure what is not directly stated, like
the colors of a noctilucent cloud at dusk. There is also some oblique
cinematic influence, particularly from film noir and French nouvelle vague.
Finally, the reason for including foreign language fragments in the collages
is that such elements add the appeal of found letters, written to someone
unnamed, or to someone no longer known.
JC Alfier’s (they/them) artistic directions are informed by photo-artists Toshiko Okanoue, Francesca Woodman, and especially Katrien De Blauwer. Journal credits include Faultline, Notre Dame Review, Penn Review, River Styx, and Vassar Review.
