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This project grew out of a whim that I had during the run up to the FR8 exhibition that was part of the 2007 Port of Los Angeles Art on the Waterfront Festival. As the curator of FR8, I had about $14,000 in commissions to award to artists, and it occurred to me that I could commission photographer Slobodan Dimitrov to photograph the artists in his signature style, as the workers and labourers that they are. So I set aside $500 and commissioned him to photograph the all of the commissioned artists with a 4″x5″ camera, using Polaroid Type 55 film.

Following the exhibition, I continued to eke out some funding here and there to photograph the various artists that were exhibiting at the Center, or with whom we were doing special projects. Some of these artists were Studio Artists, but most were not. And the project started to grow, and it became a curatorial effort on my part, and in some ways a very personal one that I want to see become a finished and complete whole.

We also began putting the images online as they were produced, uploading them to the Center’s Flickr account and starting a Flickr group to hold all of the project. Currently, as each print comes into the office, I scan them as 300 DPI .tiff files, which are then backed up, and then I process a high resolution .jpg version that is uploaded to our Flickr account. In a way, this is an online project, and an ongoing online exhibition, and it’s great to work on a long-term project and get the satisfaction of sharing the fruits throughout the process, and not just at the end.

Curatorial Thoughts

Slobodan is a professional and fine art photographer who is best known (by me, at least) for his long term portrait documentation of workers at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, as well as documentation of various union and non-union workers throughout Southern California. One of the first shows I worked on as an installer for Angels Gate, before I moved into Program Management was the multi-venue exhibition Apron Strings, where he documented workers in their aprons. I was awed by his ability as an artist then, and am further awed today. I’m attracted to his style because it is stark, and that he has an ability to capture the mood and reality of the subject in a way that the subject cannot control.

I view artmaking as a professional calling, and I that by capturing artists in this style, identical to the process that Slobodan shoots laborers, I am able, as a curator, to make a statement about the value and importance of artists as a labor force. I don’t subscribe to notions that artists are an elite; I view “fine art” as essentially descended from craft and as such, I view artists primarily as craftspeople, and it’s craft that I first look for in an artist’s work. There are several bodies of work out there that document artists, usually people working in either Los Angeles or New York at a certain time, but I don’t see those bodies of work as really making much of a statement, outside of the historical value of their documentary efforts. I really see the generation of this body of work as an effort to create a portrait of the role of artists in American working tradition, and to make a statement that they have a place in it.

The Future (as of May 2008)

This project has started to get some steam in it, and at a fortuitous time. Polaroid has stopped the manufacture of the Type 55 instant film that this project relies on, so the clock is ticking on our ability to use the film that is still out there to be bought and used. Luckily, I have managed to sell the Center on the importance of this project and secure some monies from a recent visual arts grant to purchase a full case of 200 sheets to carry the project forth from this point. So now the project has moved beyond the explorative phase and is officially “in progress”, and will probably stretch until completion sometime in 2010, when the current crop of Polaroid Type 55 film expires.

Currently there are 42 portraits in the series. Whenever possible, I’ve largely focused this project on the artists who exhibit through Angels Gate, but both Slobodan and myself would like to expand that pool to include both Studio Artists and various artists in the Harbor Area as well. Our ability to do that is largely governed by time and the future availability of Type 55 film.

Both Slobodan and myself would like to cap this project by producing a catalog. We’re looking both at seeking a sponsor, such as the Port of Los Angeles (who very generously produced the catalog for my exhibition History of San Pedro Punk, through the City of LA Printing Division) and print-on-demand options as well. The more print-on-demand stuff that I see, the more I like it, and it kind of fits in with the DYI feeling of the Flickrisation of the project, too.

Sample Images

All of the images from this project are archived and much more easily viewable in the Flickr group, but here are a few for sharing’s sake. The photo at top is of Dan Gilsdorf, taken during the prep for FR8 at the 2007 Port of Los Angeles Art on the Waterfront Festival.