The Simplicity of Magic - Alexandra Hedison
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Let’s talk with Alexandra Hedison – an inspiring photographer who creates magic by experimenting in her studio and darkroom. Her photographic work takes us to a vast, incredible universe. Growing up in Los Angeles in the family of actor David Hedison, she thought she would follow the path of acting. And indeed she did, starring in numerous Hollywood television shows and films. Photography was always in the background – something she considered a hobby until it finally overtook all other activities. Since 2002, she has been actively involved in the world of photographic art, experimenting with various photographic techniques. According to Alexandra, each of her works is a meeting, both architectural and natural, between the individual and the immensity of the landscape. “It’s in this suspended state that the unusual and unexpected arise and a kind of abstraction emerges.” Alexandra’s exhibition “A Brief Infinity,” is her latest work recently exhibited in Paris at H Gallery. This is not the first time I am presenting exceptional artworks from this gallery. After viewing Alexandra Hedison’s exhibition, I couldn’t resist interviewing the artist and for that, I thank her.
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Alexandra, maybe we could start from the very beginning. What was your relationship with art before you became an artist?
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I was an extremely visual child so art came naturally. One of my first memories in terms of artistic experience is from the age of about 6 or 7 years old. In America we had this fun thing where bakeries would design a cake with a kid’s drawing on it. For my birthday, my mom told me I could make my own design and knowingly, asked that I not make it too complicated. I made a really simple drawing – geometric lines filled with different colours. When the cake came, I was surprised that it looked different from what I had drawn. I hadn’t anticipated that the icing on the cake wouldn’t have the same texture as the felt tip pen I had used in my drawing. I think it was that moment when I realized I didn’t see things in the same way as others. I saw textures and layers as well as color and composition. I understood that feeling was evoked from a combination of those elements.
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Growing up in a highly creative environment, your creative path was quite diverse and inspiring. You attended the State University of New York at Purchase and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Why did you choose photography?
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Actually, as the daughter of an actor, I thought I would be an actress. By my early 20s, I was doing performance art and experimental theatre. I was scraping by to make ends meet and was worried about my future. I thought I needed to make money, which at 22, is actually kind of sad. I started auditioning for television and getting cast in shows, but the work, even though it paid, was almost never a satisfying experience for me. At that point, I saw my photography as a hobby. But little by little it started to be the biggest part of my life. It took me a while but I finally started trusting myself. I officially made the transition from acting to photography in 1997 or 1998, that is, in terms of considering it my actual work. It was scary, because at that point I was supporting myself as an actor but I stopped completely in order to do the thing that meant something to me. I became entirely dedicated to being an artist and did nothing else but photography for a long time. In 2002, I exhibited photographs of abstract landscapes at Rose Gallery in Bergamot Station, Los Angeles. In 2005, I showed the “(Re)Building” series, where I addressed themes of loss, transition and recovery through the use construction as a metaphor. I devoted myself to my creative work. In 2008, I photographed a series of images I titled “Ithaka,” from the CP Cavafy poem of the same name. I still felt like I didn’t know what I was doing, but I did it anyway. I really had fun shooting that work.
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Alexandra Hedison on the shooting of Firefighter TV Show
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That series of large format photographs was shot in the temperate rainforest of North America. First exhibited in London, Ithaka was included in The New Yorkers 2008 Passport to the Arts and Month of Photography, Los Angeles the following year. Could you please talk more about the experience of shooting what you describe as “levitating trees” in the rainforest?
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The Cavafy poem begins, “As you set out for Ithaka, pray that the road is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery…” I can definitely say that the experience of making that work was truly mystical…full of adventure, full of discovery. To begin with, I wasn’t prepared for the forest. The weather conditions were incredibly challenging. The shooting location was far away from the area my small crew and I had planned on staying. Due to the weather conditions, we ended up staying in the forest closer to where I was shooting. I had left most of the Polaroid film at the base camp, thinking we’d be heading back. Because we ended up staying where we were, it meant that I would have to shoot without the luxury of Polaroid film as a safety. Polaroid would have allowed me to test the compositions before committing to using precious sheets of 4×5 inch format film. It was stressful, but I did it. Later, after seeing the results, I felt proud of myself because I had to rely on both my knowledge as a photographer and my instinct. The photos exceeded my expectations. Using visual narratives found in the landscape of the temperate rainforest, I explored both the core structures that frame the forest view as well as the seasonal growth with its own shorter cycles of life and death. In the images that form Ithaka, the dense layers of the woodland underscore the allegorical physicality of the journey from a recognizable place to one that is unfamiliar. Making them from the vantage point in the forest where the trees seemed to be floating gave them a sense of levitation. The empty spaces became as pertinent as the subject with calculated attention given to capturing the shifting balance between absence and presence, shadow and light.
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In your earlier work you photographed construction sites, landscapes that allowed for reflection in the abstract nature of their composition. In your latest artworks we can see that you are going more into the material, playing with the material. What inspires you to experiment in photography?
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Experimenting with photography was always my way into the practice. It was my way of making art. I was self-taught, so everything I did was through trial and error. In my first exhibition at Rose Gallery, I was communicating the way that I see. I was showing partial views through windows – large scale photographs of raindrops on a screen, obscuring the glass. I was fascinated with that blurry view and with the obstacles that became part of the experience of seeing. When digital photography took over, something really got lost – a whole process became a thing of the past. It would be equivalent to a painting no longer being made with actual paint. Imagine a painting being made on an iPad instead of a canvas? Painters know their material. They know the smell of oil, acrylic, the texture of paint, the various pigments… they know how to make light appear out of nowhere with a brushstroke. The same thing happened with photography. Film is the same – photographers know their material. We know how Fuji film differs from Kodak, how you process it, how long it should be exposed to light, and so on….With photography it’s as much about the material, the film, as it is the paper, chemicals and the light. That was gone with the triumph of the digital era because all of a sudden everything could be done for you. Don’t get me wrong, digital is great, it’s just a different process, a different art practice. I continue to use both digital and film. Today anyone can use an app and make something unusual. Photography made via computer. For this new work, I wanted to chronicle the process itself, without the imposition of technology. In the end, the only reason I used a camera was to document the process of making images by directly exposing photographic paper to light and chemicals without the use of a negative.
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Let’s talk about your latest series “A Brief Infinity,” which you recently presented at H Gallery in Paris and is now showing at Von Lintel Gallery in Los Angeles. As you said, this series is very different from the others. It seems that you started experimenting more with photographic techniques, with chemistry. Could you elaborate on your new work and how you arrived at this process?
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2020 was a year of tremendous uncertainty. A worldwide pandemic ushered in mandatory stay at home orders, enforcing a kind of limbo state and for me a direct experience of the ‘in between.’ In the midst of the lock-down, the murder of George Floyd ignited a fervent cultural response. Systemic deficiencies at the foundation of U.S. culture were once again exposed. Much like a chemical reaction to opposing elements, that which had previously been immutable was fast converting from inertia into action. In isolation I felt connected to a process underway. I, too, was changing. The usual rhythm of my practice had been interrupted. COVID-19 restrictions prevented me from traveling for work. Exhibitions were cancelled, public spaces were off limits, entire countries had closed their borders. What was once a theoretical concept of restriction had become literal. For this series, at this specific time, I decided to make work in a different way. There was nowhere to go except the darkroom. I started experimenting with chemigrams, a unique process discovered by Pierre Cordier in 1956. Unlike traditional photography which records an image later developed into a print, chemigrams require nothing more than the interaction of chemicals and light on photographic paper.
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There’s something paradoxical about seeing an abstract landscape which is essentially a composition burned by chemicals. How do you manage to create such a vivid image with such a “destructive” and “damaging” technique?
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I used packing tape, clear varnish and metallic paint to alternately delay and facilitate the effects of light exposure and chemicals upon the paper. The imagery that surfaced spoke directly to the feelings of change— evolution and transformation — building inside of me as the pandemic wore on. The truth, my truth, surfaced in the dark room via the use of paper and crude materials to make a deeper beauty come to the surface, to life. Working alone in the darkroom, the chemigram process revealed itself to me. I chose to photograph the results one instant to the next, making records of these abstract and shifting landscapes. A single moment marked by unexpected color and fluctuating patterns served as an indicator of what once was and what is yet to come — a brief infinity. Each moment I photographed is a record of a transformation underway, both personal and objective, a split-second in a state of flux brought into view within a single frame. A ‘forever now’ represented in what Cartier-Bresson referred to as “the decisive moment.” Stopping to capture the transformation of the paper’s degraded surface as it changes irreversibly from one moment to the next. Often after only a few seconds, the colors are gone entirely. The images produced are moments in time which have now passed—moments since eclipsed by other moments. Resist, reflect, reflux. The original chemigrams are still sensitive to light. They’re continuing to change as we speak. They will eventually fade away completely. My photographs also consider the similarities between micro and macro patterning – some are like images captured with a satellite, appearing to be patches of the earth (which we see from high up through the window of a plane), others look like molecular structures seen through a microscope. People see these references in this work and also make a connection to other artists’ work throughout history – from Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollack, Klimt, even Aboriginal and African art.
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Up until this point, you’ve worked exclusively in photography. But your photographic work has a painterly energy. Have you never wanted to paint?
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It’s true. Something unexpected happened working on this new series. I started to feel the urge to touch the photograph and put my own brushstroke on it, as if to continue the process that was unfolding in the work already. Ironically, the materials of resistance are mutually additive to and preventative from the experience of becoming, both in art and life. The reflective materiality of the paint applied, then removed, then applied again, references the cyclical nature of change. Some of the silver colour that I used in the chemical process remained on the paper. I wanted the silver to reflect as it did on the chemigram, so I added the same silver paint to some of the photographs mimicking what remained on the original. The artist’s hand affects the work through performance and witnesses the unexpected result. The process continues. Let’s see where that desire to affect the finished work will take me in the future.
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The original interview was published in the Lithuanian magazine “Lamų Slėnis”
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Thank you
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