WEBVTT

00:00:01.517 --> 00:00:03.010
[DUMBO, Brooklyn]

00:00:31.099 --> 00:00:34.696
[Daniel Gordon, Artist]

00:00:42.516 --> 00:00:46.614
[Daniel Gordon Gets Physical]

00:01:00.651 --> 00:01:03.621
When I was in college, I did a couple of things

00:01:03.621 --> 00:01:06.676
to try to understand the mechanics of a photograph.

00:01:07.336 --> 00:01:11.052
And then, pretty early on, I hit on this thing.

00:01:13.169 --> 00:01:16.819
I realized that I could make myself fly, through photography.

00:01:18.166 --> 00:01:21.897
That was one very specific idea,

00:01:21.897 --> 00:01:25.421
that you set up a camera,

00:01:25.421 --> 00:01:27.204
you're photographing an event

00:01:27.204 --> 00:01:30.571
where the camera kind of transforms

00:01:30.571 --> 00:01:31.664
what's in front of the lens.

00:01:32.370 --> 00:01:34.001
And something happens,

00:01:34.001 --> 00:01:37.183
and that thing that was there didn't happen,

00:01:37.621 --> 00:01:41.601
or didn't look like what it is in the picture.

00:01:43.081 --> 00:01:47.171
It's a fiction and a truth at the same time,

00:01:47.723 --> 00:01:50.053
and I think it was that transformation

00:01:50.070 --> 00:01:53.773
that really drew me to photography.

00:01:59.328 --> 00:02:04.666
I did not set out to have a studio-based photographic practice.

00:02:05.562 --> 00:02:10.203
I developed, over many years, a process that enabled me

00:02:10.203 --> 00:02:15.772
to attempt to do that transformation in my own way.

00:02:18.084 --> 00:02:22.111
I was shooting with continuous lights, 8-by-10 slide film,

00:02:22.111 --> 00:02:23.973
and they stopped making the film.

00:02:24.290 --> 00:02:26.342
So I had to switch to strobe lights,

00:02:26.744 --> 00:02:29.940
which is just the flash and you can't see what the shadow is doing.

00:02:29.940 --> 00:02:32.743
And so I had to kind of paint the shadows in myself.

00:02:34.017 --> 00:02:35.882
And then I started tweaking the colors

00:02:35.882 --> 00:02:37.851
and kind of them more of a part of the composition,

00:02:37.851 --> 00:02:39.881
and just getting wild.

00:02:47.622 --> 00:02:48.698
[shutter clicking]

00:02:57.708 --> 00:03:00.780
So, the first picture that I made using found images

00:03:00.780 --> 00:03:03.580
was of a picture of a toe transplant operation.

00:03:04.842 --> 00:03:07.675
When I was a kid, my dad who was a hand surgeon

00:03:07.675 --> 00:03:10.939
made lots of photographs of his cases.

00:03:12.242 --> 00:03:14.874
They were just like totally gory and crazy looking,

00:03:14.874 --> 00:03:16.581
but fascinating.

00:03:17.114 --> 00:03:18.575
Yeah, I really like this picture.

00:03:19.981 --> 00:03:22.447
I don't know if this is a toe transplant operation,

00:03:22.447 --> 00:03:24.644
and I don't know if my dad is this guy,

00:03:24.644 --> 00:03:26.337
or the guy taking the picture.

00:03:31.139 --> 00:03:32.813
And it kind of came full circle,

00:03:32.813 --> 00:03:35.136
transplanting a toe into a thumb

00:03:35.136 --> 00:03:39.213
and transplanting images from online into physical space.

00:03:40.706 --> 00:03:43.107
So I thought, what if I could kind of

00:03:44.077 --> 00:03:49.342
transport these images that probably had no other life

00:03:49.342 --> 00:03:52.043
other than the life that they've had online,

00:03:52.043 --> 00:03:53.643
and give them a body--

00:03:53.643 --> 00:03:55.753
give them a form in real life.

00:04:05.937 --> 00:04:09.275
This is my wife Ruby's silhouette,

00:04:10.025 --> 00:04:11.603
taken two weeks ago

00:04:13.930 --> 00:04:14.593
by me.

00:04:17.000 --> 00:04:19.610
There's been a lot of talk about appropriation,

00:04:20.664 --> 00:04:22.061
in a critical sense.

00:04:22.497 --> 00:04:25.200
But I like to think about what I'm doing as, like,

00:04:25.200 --> 00:04:27.865
an optimistic version of appropriation

00:04:27.865 --> 00:04:30.298
where I'm kind of naive.

00:04:30.664 --> 00:04:34.368
The images are all ground up and blended together in a way that

00:04:34.368 --> 00:04:36.949
the history of them is not important.

00:04:38.139 --> 00:04:43.200
What I do want somebody to think about is just the picture.

00:04:44.232 --> 00:04:50.339
It's not that one can't have a really compelling conversation about art

00:04:50.339 --> 00:04:53.203
in the world via appropriation,

00:04:53.203 --> 00:04:57.898
but I do think that as I continue to make pictures

00:04:57.898 --> 00:05:00.571
I've been allowing things to be more beautiful--

00:05:00.571 --> 00:05:03.594
allowing those relationships

00:05:04.719 --> 00:05:07.687
between physical things within a photograph

00:05:07.687 --> 00:05:10.487
to kind of make meaning.

00:05:10.487 --> 00:05:11.506
[shutter clicks]

00:05:32.899 --> 00:05:35.681
I never really know what I'm going to get,

00:05:35.681 --> 00:05:38.156
even though I spend so much time with it

00:05:38.156 --> 00:05:40.690
in the process of making it.

00:05:44.921 --> 00:05:46.184
I kind of like not knowing,

00:05:46.184 --> 00:05:48.489
and then getting the film back and being surprised

00:05:48.489 --> 00:05:50.689
by how it morphs from, kind of,

00:05:50.689 --> 00:05:54.047
jumble of pretty shoddily-made stuff

00:05:54.637 --> 00:05:57.048
into something that does have depth

00:05:57.048 --> 00:05:58.187
and substance

00:05:58.187 --> 00:06:00.584
and kind of turns into something real.

00:06:05.876 --> 00:06:09.645
It's really transformed through making the photograph.

00:06:09.645 --> 00:06:11.677
I mean, I'm happy about this

00:06:11.677 --> 00:06:13.277
black kind of blend in

00:06:13.277 --> 00:06:14.571
to the foreground and the background,

00:06:14.571 --> 00:06:16.200
and have the white blend in

00:06:16.200 --> 00:06:17.877
with the foreground and the background.

00:06:18.476 --> 00:06:19.568
I like it.

00:06:20.571 --> 00:06:23.075
I'm really interested in those points

00:06:23.075 --> 00:06:27.799
where one extreme meets another extreme,

00:06:28.230 --> 00:06:30.874
and you're not quite sure what you're looking at.

00:06:42.938 --> 00:06:45.000
The transparency will be drum scanned,

00:06:45.000 --> 00:06:48.210
which is just a very good scan.

00:06:50.108 --> 00:06:52.644
And I work with Anthony from Green Rhino.

00:06:53.030 --> 00:06:56.045
We'll do, like, four or five meetings,

00:06:56.045 --> 00:06:58.306
starting with small prints,

00:06:58.306 --> 00:06:59.875
just to work on the color.

00:07:00.077 --> 00:07:02.737
We can color correct for specific parts.

00:07:04.376 --> 00:07:07.907
So, say the reds aren't quite the right red,

00:07:07.907 --> 00:07:10.432
we can select that part

00:07:10.432 --> 00:07:11.876
and make it correct.

00:07:12.107 --> 00:07:14.032
But, more or less what we're doing is just

00:07:14.032 --> 00:07:16.444
correcting it to make it look like

00:07:16.444 --> 00:07:17.844
what it looked like.

00:07:26.605 --> 00:07:27.370
Looks good.

00:07:32.801 --> 00:07:34.032
It is interesting

00:07:34.032 --> 00:07:39.609
how I spend ninety-nine percent of my time in process--

00:07:39.875 --> 00:07:40.938
finding images,

00:07:42.044 --> 00:07:42.937
printing them out,

00:07:43.202 --> 00:07:45.800
constructing them into a three-dimensional thing,

00:07:46.107 --> 00:07:47.245
photographing that,

00:07:48.432 --> 00:07:49.876
processing that film,

00:07:50.801 --> 00:07:52.601
scanning it on my little scanner,

00:07:52.939 --> 00:07:53.770
making a print,

00:07:53.939 --> 00:07:55.274
looking at it on the wall--

00:07:55.877 --> 00:07:56.939
and how little time

00:07:58.306 --> 00:08:00.340
I get with the actual work.

00:08:01.568 --> 00:08:04.245
If I'm lucky, it's in a show,

00:08:04.598 --> 00:08:06.876
and I get to look at it

00:08:07.032 --> 00:08:08.444
while I install it,

00:08:09.232 --> 00:08:10.876
and spend a little time with it.

00:08:11.507 --> 00:08:14.970
But the final thing does really matter,

00:08:15.372 --> 00:08:17.307
and it's important that it resolves,

00:08:17.307 --> 00:08:18.202
in the end,

00:08:18.202 --> 00:08:19.645
as a print.