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.

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