Lee Deigaard

  • WORK BY MEDIUM
    • Photography
      • Unbidden
        • Unbidden (i)
        • Unbidden (ii)
        • Sagacious Creatures
        • Horse: Nocturnal
        • Installation Trespass
        • installation views
      • Equuleus
      • Crusher Run
      • Horse: Diurnal
      • Horse: Nocturnal
      • Dirty/Pure
      • Dirty Lick
      • Embedded Lenses
      • Exploded Trees
      • Things Fall Apart
    • Photogenic Drawings
      • Encephalograms
      • Photogenic Drawings of Trees
      • Photogenic Drawings: Petri
      • Photogenic Drawings: Untitled (fluoroscopy)
      • Photogenic Drawings: Vortices III
    • Drawing/ Painting
      • Ink Drawings of Trees
      • Vortices
      • Trees
      • Drawings
    • Installation
      • One Thing Leads to Another
      • Pulse
      • Submerge
      • Crusher Run
      • Flow
      • Steady Star
      • A Tree Falls
      • Eclogue
    • Projects
      • Horses at the Museum
        • How to Invite a Horse to a Museum
        • Gus and Deuce Go Elsewhere (video)
        • Gus and Deuce Go Elsewhere [stills]
        • Field Trip
        • One Day
    • Sculpture
      • Forms
      • Hybrid Woman
      • Topsy
      • Horse and Rider
      • Heads
      • Heads
      • Heads, in the hand
      • Body
    • Video
      • Gus and Deuce Go Elsewhere (video)
      • Plastic Gulf
      • Steady Star
      • One Thing Leads to Another
  • WORK BY CONCEPT
    • Recent
    • Things Fall Apart
      • Things Fall Apart
      • Exploded Trees
      • A Tree Falls
    • Photogenic Drawings
      • Photogenic Drawings of Trees
      • Encephalograms
      • Photogenic Drawings: Petri
      • Photogenic Drawings: Untitled (fluoroscopy)
      • Photogenic Drawings: Vortices III
    • Animal Protagonist
      • Unbidden (i)
      • Unbidden (ii)
      • Sagacious Creatures
      • Topsy
      • Horse: Nocturnal
    • Horse
      • Equuleus
      • Horses at the Museum
        • Gus and Deuce Go Elsewhere (video)
        • Gus and Deuce Go Elsewhere [stills]
        • How to Invite a Horse to a Museum
        • Field Trip
        • One Day
      • One Thing Leads to Another
      • Horse: Diurnal
      • Horse: Nocturnal
      • Dirty/Pure
    • Topography
      • Crusher Run
      • Ink Drawings of Trees
      • Vortices
    • Moving Parts
      • Plastic Gulf
      • Steady Star
    • Body/Corporal
      • Equuleus
      • Forms
      • Hybrid Woman
      • Dirty Lick
      • Dirty/Pure
      • Horse and Rider
      • Body
      • Heads
      • Heads
      • Heads, in the hand
    • Forensic
      • Exploded Trees
      • Embedded Lenses
    • Textual
      • Dirty/Pure
    • Immersive
      • Pulse
      • Steady Star
      • Submerge
      • Flow
  • CURATE/COLLAB
    • Latin for Crab
    • PhotoBOMB
    • Standing Heat
    • You Beautiful Bitch
    • Animal Proximity
    • Sfumato
    • at The Front
  • INFO
  • WRITING
    • Encephalograms
    • Topsy Memorial
    • Forms
    • Photogenic Drawings
    • Hybrid Woman
    • Trees
    • a tree falls
    • Writing: Statmob
  • NEWS

PHOTOGENIC DRAWINGS

Photogenic Drawings of Trees are digital reworkings of victorian techniques for the cataloging of botanical specimens. They are equal parts life drawing and photography, and like the Victorian methods, they use the movement of light and shadow to record natural ephemera.

The term “photogenic drawing” comes from William Henry Fox Talbot, a 19th century photographer, to whom early photographs were drawings produced by light. Photography’s origin as a word reflects this belief: photo- light, graph- draw . The scholar Carol Armstrong has said early photography was seen by many of its practicioners as being “…a species of the larger genus of drawing.” Talbot himself said that photography was “… a new if not altogether better form of drawing, in which nature drew herself.”

Anna Atkins, who published a beautiful early 19th century book of cyanotypes, or sunprints, held that the plant specimen participated in its own representation.

This is a refreshing perspective—to share the artistic credit so generously with the leaves and algae. A popular Victorian saying held that [God’s] “… pencil grows in every flower.” Talbot called one of his books, The Pencil of Nature.

 

Most means for capturing and preserving botanical specimens, whether photograms, nature prints, etchings, or cyanotypes, flattened their subjects into the surface of the picture plane. I wanted to deepen the perceptual depth of field to three-dimensions. But even with increased depth of field, silhouette plays its essential role.

When drawing, the artist’s eyes and hands (and brain) are serial filters in the process of representing—with marks on a page– what light has delineated before him.

In cameraless photography, the specimen lying on the photosensitive emulsion is a similar filter in that its contours and translucencies—like our optic nerves, our motor nerves, our gray matter– focus diffuse light into a drawing implement that leaves marks on a page.

A camera adds a lens, or an eye, to this process of serial filtration.

Computers and digital technology further amplify the drawing process.

A subheading for this series, is Cellulolytic Transpositions. Or to anatomize it: going from 3-D tree to 2-D pulp to 2-D tree simulacrum to 3-D illuminated space to camera lens to computer code to 2-D illuminated space back to 2-D paper pulp. And so on.

Is this still botany? Or is it meta-botany?

 

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