The Presence of Absence: Photography Collections from Wake Forest University
by Tsing Liu, December 11, 2022
The invention of photography in the 19th century has drastically changed how art was perceived and gave way to new artistic movements throughout art history due to its ability to represent reality. This exhibition focuses on two figures from Wake Forest University and their use of documentary photography to reveal historical narratives as well as lift consciousness above the contingent realities of the material world.
Houck Medford attended Wake Forest University (1972) and was the first faculty member of Wake Forest University Medical Center’s Department of Dentistry. As a Southern documentary photographer residing in the mountains of western North Carolina, he has created numerous series on different geographic landscapes throughout the region. On the other hand, Professor Emeritus of Art Robert (Bob) Knott taught at Wake Forest from 1975 to 2008. As an art historian as well as artist, he pushed for equal weighting when leading Wake Forest’s art department and was a guiding inspiration for the Student Union Collection of Contemporary Art (recently renamed the Mark H. Reece Collection of Student-Acquired Contemporary Art).
While Medford’s What Happened? documents daunting, abandoned structures in rural Virginia, Knott’s Venice: The Laundry Series takes on the narrative of a foreigner’s wandering in historic Venice and the discovery of colorful spontaneity of the mundane. In the absence of human figures, the presence of man-made structures and changes brought about by nature and human intervention may serve as a time machine into the past.
What Happened?
Situated on a high plateau adjacent to the Blue Ridge escarpment of Southwest Virginia, Floyd County was officially established in 1831. From the beginning, its economy has been dominated by agriculture. Newcomers and settlers built homes and raised families, grew crops and grazed cattle. But into the 20th century, substantial homes were abandoned leaving the rolling landscape dotted with residences which now no longer have occupants. What happened?
The symbiotic relationship between trees and abandoned farmland houses may be interpreted as a symbol for the agriculture-dominated economy of Floyd County, Virginia. Originally an agrarian society held reign here: cattle, dairies, mixed crops, and timber were the mainstays of livelihood. By the 1850s, transportation improvement in the region and the growth of tobacco locally led to the increasing connection between the local agricultural economy and larger economies. After the Civil War, the local economy continued to be dominated by agriculture, with land particularly well suited for grazing.
However, acreage in crops and livestock started dropping after reaching a peak in 1900. During the Great Depression, many families with debt could not make their payments and had to sell their farms. The construction of the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Civilian Conservation Corps brought needed work to some in the County. Meanwhile, the local economy is no longer dominated by agriculture, largely due to local growth and mechanization.
Similar to William Christenberry (1936 - 2016)’s color photographs of abandoned structures in rural Alabama, the centrally composed study of the land we live on begs the question of migration and settlement, economic growth and simplistic lifestyle. Deteriorations and changes brought about by nature and human intervention chronicle the passage of time. It also sheds light on the transient nature of human intervention in relation to the larger ecological system’s ability to restore homeostasis.
In addition to rolling hills, open pastures, and dense mixed forests, Floyd County is dotted with transmission towers. The local telephone cooperative began investing in fiber optics in the 1990s, offering people the freedom to live in Floyd County and telecommute to work for companies or industries elsewhere.
By 2000, Floyd County has become more of a bedroom community with workers needing to commute long distances. Driven in part by authentic and diverse musical offerings, the arts and natural beauty, tourism to Floyd was also increasing dramatically.
What is a platinotype?
The platinotype process was invented by William Willis (British) in 1873 and made commercially available in 1879. The most distinct, appealing characteristic of a platinotype (also called a platinum print) is its deeply matte and sometimes velvety surface. Platinotype displays a wide range of tonality. Its aesthetic qualities and reputation for permanence are celebrated by Pictorialist photographers and commercial photographers for high-end portraiture. Most platinum printing ended around 1914 due to the demand for platinum for manufacturing high explosives for World War I. However, contemporary photographers’ yearning for hand-crafted art and unparalleled prints enabled transferring of digital images to alternative photographic prints. The resulting images tend to be intimately sized due to the noble metal and chemicals needed for printing. The black borders around the photographs are purposeful artifacts of the printing process.
Venice: The Laundry Series
During his six-month residency as the director of Wake Forest Study Abroad program in Venice, Knott (1940 - 2010) abstracted colors and shapes from the mundane and developed Venice: The Laundry Series. Instead of focusing his camera lens on familiar canal vistas and postcard famous piazzas during his daily wanderings, he found himself attracted to juxtapositions of the colorful spontaneity of clothesline against the underlying details of historic Venice.
The stark contrast between white apparel and shadowed building structure may underscore the implicit analogy between clotheslines and gallery walls as exhibition venue. From tee shirts emblazoned with messages for public consumption to intimate lingerie that invites a private audience, the constantly changing clotheslines may be viewed as representational portraits of individuals to whom they belong. It is not hard to deduct age, family size and social status from the items on a clothesline.
While the Bovini tower takes up most of the picture frame, the quiet pastel fades into the background, allowing viewers’ to shift their attention to the colorful wash and apparel. Shot from below against the sky, they flap like flags in a ceremonial procession. Similarly, Knott’s use of composition promotes the intricate balance of chaos and order. A piece of pastel wash is dangled across the picture frame, blocking the presence of the fourth window. The intentional cropping of the windows suggests a selection of a larger reality while keeping viewers’ attention from wandering beyond the picture frame.
The deep depth of field contributes to the flatness of the photograph. But from the contrast in the textured brick wall vs. the smooth fabric of the wash, it is not hard to separate the two. Knott was born around the time when electric dryers became widely marketable and line dry was replaced by industrialized laundry in the US. But before laundromats and electric dryers, the clotheslines were an intrinsic component of the urban landscape and often associated with the poor and working class. In fact, they were useful in many other ways besides drying the laundry, such as running messages and cups of sugar to neighbors or conveying groceries. In Lures and Snares of Old New York, Luc Sante commented that the clotheslines were “characteristic of a life stretched by necessity.”
While the communal laundry lines were stretched out of interiors of apartments across the alley in historic venice, most laundry poles were uprooted as eyesores of New York City. Spending his early years in the American Northeast, Knott may have been familiar with the New Yorkers who haul their heavy laundry down the narrow streets to laundromats. On the other hand, environmentalists willing to take the risk of leaving their fresh laundry with layered dust hang clotheslines to fight against global warming.