CM: So the ones in the middle are my oldest stuff, from my freshman year. And then the stuff on the edges is what I’m working on now. This on the top is my big project from Junior year. And this is the stuff I was working on over the summer.
SK: So what’s your idea behind these pictures? What were you thinking about in your Junior project?
CM: Okay, this one, on the top four prints here. I love fields. I just love fields. These big, empty spaces… I don’t know why. I’m from a really suburban area so everyone’s really on top of each other and I love open spaces, I like big spaces, I feel like I would really love a desert if I ever saw one. So I like to use the field -
SK: Oh, wait. Where are you from?
CM: I’m from Warren.
SK: Oh, I’m from Scotch Plains, I recognize that, it’s from Route 22.
CM: Yeah that’s Route 22. That’s funny. Yeah, but I use the field in these as a nowhere place, like a purgatory where I can bring out the other images of people in motion, jumping, doing their thing. It’s like taking landscapes and putting them together. They’re not perfectly in sync.
SK: Well How many photos are in one of these prints?
CM: It’s just two photos each. They separate out, it’s the photo of the people jumping over a picture of the field, the railroad tracks. I brought a ladder out to a field and I had a bunch of my friends just jump off of it. I was inspired by this stuff- have you ever been on Stumble Upon?
SK: Oh yeah, it’s so hard to stop.
CM: Yeah I know, it’s so hard to stop. I found this artist, his name is Cole Rise. He’s just like some hipster that did a bunch of album art but he had pictures of people jumping in midair, in these big fields, and I was just so taken away with it. I said, “This is so cool, I have to do something with this.” And these are the products. It’s just like a purgatory where people aren’t really anywhere. You know what I mean?
SK: Yeah it feels like that. It’s just a location that doesn’t really have a place.
CM: Yeah, it’s suburbia. Suburbia influences everything I do. Every print I make is about the suffocation of the beautiful prison.
SK: And what about these? You said these were an addendum to the larger project?
CM: Yeah these add on to this. These are the day portion, where these are the night portion. These four prints – I took these all out of focus. I think of them as kind of landscapes, even the portrait type ones. They’re just about the strangeness about night and what happens in suburbia at night. I never really got to finish this too much; I never really got into the meat of it. I’m going to add a few more. It’s like the road here. I did a little trick I just doubled up up top.
SK: Yeah, I was wondering how that was done.
CM: Yeah, when I first took the picture, I accidentally banged my elbow against the camera, and I did kind of a double thing, and I went back in Photoshop and I cleaned it up a little bit.
SK: So are these digital?
CM: These are digital, all the black and white are film, and these color ones over here are film.
SK: And what artists do you look at?
CM: Artists. I love Barbara Kruger, do you know her?
SK: Yeah, from art history.
CM: Yeah? She’s just so in your face. I really love her stuff. But I think my main influences would be like Nan Golden and Ryan McGinley, do you know them?
SK: No, are they a big deal?
CM: They’re like what everyone equates with these like seventies you know like sex and drugs and really hard core, like New York City type Photography. Ryan McGinley has this series called “Nowhere Place” that I really related to.
[Ryan McGinley,
http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kz3negMPWF1qzu6nxo1_500.jpg]
SK: And these earlier ones, they all seem to fit in with your aesthetic.
CM: Yeah, these are really early things that I was working on in my freshman year. I really like landscapes a lot.
SK: This one’s so beautiful.
CM: Thank you. Yeah these are actually the exact same place, I just like turned around to take the photo. Yeah this is a flood plain of the Passaic.
SK: Yeah, I was just thinking it looked like a flood, but I was thinking there’s no way he took that like a couple days ago.
CM: Yeah it’s a flood plain of the Passaic, I was up to my waist in flood water while I was taking that.
SK: Well it’s so worth it.
CM: Yeah it was so worth taking that picture, it’s one of my favorites.
SK: Do you have any ideas for your thesis?
CM: Do I have any ideas for my thesis? I do. I’m going to continue doing this type of thing, I think I’m going to continue with these double exposure type of thing because I really like doing that. It’s going to be something about New Jersey, and about living in New Jersey and all the aspects thereof, suburbia and weirdness. I really like- it doesn’t come out so much in this work – but I really like having an element of strangeness, something that’s not supposed to be there, or something that’s physically impossible.
SK: Like this one, how is this done?
CM: Yeah, it’s snow, I took it while it was snowing. With the flash.
SK: No way.
CM: Yeah it’s a little effect that happens when you use the flash and you have really close small particles. You use the flash and it makes really perfect circles out of all of them. So I like having like magical elements to my photos in a way.
SK: yeah, they’re all kind of mysterious. I couldn’t tell that it was just two photos, you really don’t know. These could be separate, you know, I have no idea.
CM: I just like the weirdness…So what I did a couple weeks ago, I built these devil’s horns out of plaster and chicken wire. And I’m going to start photographing silhouettes of people wearing them.
SK: Yeah especially if you in these fields, it’s going to be very Jersey Devil.
CM: Yeah I want to do something with folk-culture and teenagers. I just want weird, I just want weird things. And these guys over here, I’m doing another project. This is my boyfriend, his name is Andrew. And I was just photographing him in the shower. I’m making it a part of a project where I’m going to back and I’m going to photograph all of my exboyfriends in their habitats.
SK: That would be really interesting, like from a personal point of view.
CM: Yeah I thought it would be a weird way to examine myself. Through the people I chose to be with. Seeing all those different time periods all in the same project would be kind of weird.
SK: Yeah, that would be really weird. And it would kind of make you uncomfortable.
CM: Yeah exactly.
SK: Also I really like these numbers. I think it adds to your “weirdness.”
CM: Yeah thanks. I didn’t have time to develop those myself, I just got them done at the local photo place. I thought that was kind of cool.
SK: Yeah, it really fits in. Also is it dangerous to take pictures in the shower? I’d be so nervous.
CM: Yeah, I was soaking wet, I was standing on either side of the bathtub, I was like, “Don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t get it wet.”
SK: Are these two separate pictures?
CM: Yeah, it’s a diptych. It’s two separate pictures but they both have black around the edges, it’s a digital one. So I decided to make a diptych out of them.
SK: Well I know very minimal about film and then I know nothing about digital, so this is all a mystery to me.
CM: I’m going to do my project for thesis in film, I can’t stand digital anymore.
SK: Really?
CM: It’s such a complicated medium. There’s so many choices you can make.
SK: And then with Photoshop, there’s even more..
CM: Yeah exactly. It makes the image too unstable. I just can’t deal with it. So I’m going back to film because it’s easier for me.
SK: It seems really hard to understand it all.
CM: I’m okay with digital, but I’m going back to film with the rest of this. I mean, ideally, I’d live to do something sculptural like I was telling you before but I’m going to try it.
SK: Yeah you might as well try, I mean we have a whole year to experiment.
CM: I’m really going to try it, I just need to find fishing line that’s thick enough so that it’ll actually hold the emulsion.
SK: That’s true, and will it cling to it?
CM: I don’t know, I have no idea. I’m going to set it on a flat surface and let it dry first because I don’t know. I mean ideally, the string would kind of move with the air of the gallery, I don’t want it to be rigid.
SK: And would it be on one plane?
CM: It would be like a three dimensional thing, it would be like a spider web, across a corner, a wall to a floor, something people can walk through.
SK: Yeah so it only looks like a perfect photo from a certain spot.
CM: Exactly. It’ll be kind of distorted.
SK: That’s really cool.
CM: it’s a really cool idea, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to execute it but we’ll see.
SM: I mean, you should definitely try it.
CM: Yeah, I’ll definitely try it, so we’ll see.
SK: And it creates so many more problems, like how does the image relate to the shape. So much more to worry about.
CM: Yeah so many more problems to solve. So many wonderful problems.
SK: Well, it’s really exciting. And I can’t think of any more questions, so I guess we’re done.
