Penelope Umbrico’s work is to classical photography as hip hop is to soul, blues and jazz music: a giant remix.
It starts with her using an iPhone to take photos of classic
images of mountains shot by the likes of Henry Cartier-Bresson and
Edward Weston. Next, she chooses from the many photography apps on her
iPhone and runs her photos through almost every filter. She’ll process
her photos several hundred times. From 19 original photos, she’s created
6,000 images for Range.
“I wanted to get the photographs far enough from the original but
still wanted a reference,” she says. “Sometimes that would take 15
minutes and sometimes that would take three days.” Moving Mountains, from Range: of Aperture Masters of Photography (with camera app filters), installation for Aperture Remix, Aperture Foundation, 2012.
Some of the apps she uses frequently include Afterlight, Plastic Bullet Camera and Pixlr-o-matic.
She’s particularly drawn to filters that create the illusion of light
leaks and chemical burn effects that look like film. The photographers
whose work she appropriates were technical perfectionists, and she likes
the juxtaposition. “I found it ironic that we have this nostalgia for
analog mistakes but none of these photographers would have allowed those
mistakes into their work,” she says. Range, Aperture, 2014.
The project and corresponding book
is a technicolor mashup of old and new photography, harkening to the
masters while having the punchy “pop” of Instagram. Umbrico chose to
re-photograph mountains because they represent stability, while
photography, she feels, is the opposite. New technology—like her iPhone
and the apps she uses—has the genre in constant flux. “Photography is
always changing, but I do think right now is a particularly amazing
moment,” she says.
Beneath the technical details, the project is designed to make a
statement about the “masters” of photography. While
artists like Cartier-Bresson and Weston are icons, she feels the idea of
labeling someone a “master” is fading. There are so many types of
photography these days that it’s hard to declare any photographer a
defining leader of the medium.
“At this moment I think the idea of the master has really been
deflated,” she says. “Everything is based on intention and context these
days so there is no inherent masterly quality.”
