Jonathan B Smith | Biography & Contact

Jonathan B. Smith
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Photoliminal What began as a photographic exploration of the medical/scientific view has become a collection of photographs of a collection of objects. Delving into the philosophy of objects, one finds a rich history of thought, beginning with the etymology of the word object (latin objectus: something thrown before or presented to the mind) and tracing a path through Plato’s Realm of Forms to Kant and his ding-an-sein, up to Edward Weston’s peppers and modernist conceptions of photographic form. A contemporary reading of these varied references is found in the many theorists, like Jaques Derrida, who wonder at the connection of the reference to the referent, or whether there is even a connection at all. Edward Weston wrote “With a medium capable of revealing more than the eye sees, ‘things in themselves’ could be recorded, clearly, powerfully…” He continues to say that those photographers who resort to tricks, the pictorialists, are sceptics and hardly photographers. He believed in the power of photography to faithfully represent Kant’s “thing-in-itself” and not only believed in the connection of the reference to the referent, but felt, perhaps, that the representation was as real as the referent. “ …the camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself…” This collection of objects uses no “tricks” in its recording – no “impressionistic blur,” and yet the objects dance on the edge of description, first becoming one thing, then another. Many are perhaps identifiable, but not wholly descriptive. Shot on 35mm black and white film and printed in a color process, there is no other manipulation that takes place. They are references that never quite meet their referent; they are objects with which we are viscerally familiar, yet cognitively distanced; they are a collection of references thrown before the mind. They are, as Jasper Johns has said, “An object that tells of the loss, destruction, disappearance of objects. Does not speak of itself. Tells of others. Will it include them?”
VITAE 2009 Grand Duchy Petite Fours CD Cover http://www.cookingvinyl.com/release_info.php?id=504 2009 Santa Fe Prize Nomination Santa Fe Center for Photography 2008 Solo Exhibition – Neither/Nor DIVA Art Gallery, Eugene, OR 2006 Body of Art exhibition Willoughby-Baltic Gallery Somerville, MA 2004 Fact/Fiction Photography Competition - Creative Arts Workshop, New Haven CT 2004 Society of Photographic Educators NW Regional MFA Competition 2003 Agora Gallery SOHO International Art Competition 2003 SPE Northwest 16x20 Juried Competition Photographic Center Northwest 2001 Laverne Krause Gallery University of Oregon Advanced Photography exhibition Employment Present - Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon Preparator/Graphic Designer 2003 - 2004 University of Oregon Graduate Teaching Fellow EDUCATION 2001 - 2004 University of Oregon MFA Fine Art Photography 1999 - 2001 University of Oregon BA Fine Arts 1991-1995 Nazareth College of Rochester B.A. Philosophy and German 1993 Bayerische Julius-Maximilians-Universität, Würzburg, Germany 1986-1990 Monroe Community College A.A. History Contact: PO Box 50703 Eugene, OR 97405 541.954.5374
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Photoliminal
What began as a photographic exploration of the medical/scientific view has become a collection of photographs of a collection of objects. Delving into the philosophy of objects, one finds a rich history of thought, beginning with the etymology of the word object (latin objectus: something thrown before or presented to the mind) and tracing a path through Plato’s Realm of Forms to Kant and his ding-an-sein, up to Edward Weston’s peppers and modernist conceptions of photographic form. A contemporary reading of these varied references is found in the many theorists, like Jaques Derrida, who wonder at the connection of the reference to the referent, or whether there is even a connection at all.

Edward Weston wrote “With a medium capable of revealing more than the eye sees, ‘things in themselves’ could be recorded, clearly, powerfully…” He continues to say that those photographers who resort to tricks, the pictorialists, are sceptics and hardly photographers. He believed in the power of photography to faithfully represent Kant’s “thing-in-itself” and not only believed in the connection of the reference to the referent, but felt, perhaps, that the representation was as real as the referent. “ …the camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself…”

This collection of objects uses no “tricks” in its recording – no “impressionistic blur,” and yet the objects dance on the edge of description, first becoming one thing, then another. Many are perhaps identifiable, but not wholly descriptive. Shot on 35mm black and white film and printed in a color process, there is no other manipulation that takes place. They are references that never quite meet their referent; they are objects with which we are viscerally familiar, yet cognitively distanced; they are a collection of references thrown before the mind. They are, as Jasper Johns has said, “An object that tells of the loss, destruction, disappearance of objects. Does not speak of itself. Tells of others. Will it include them?”

Jonathan B. Smith