MFA Final Critiques
The Great Hall at the Logan Center, Chicago, IL
03.10.2025
MFA Disertation
The sky is never ending, yet flat
Photography, in all of its capabilities of rendering the world within a frame, amounts to just that, a frame of the world as it is. A photograph embodies a literalness that is often misunderstood as honesty. Though the conversations of truth and truth-telling within photography are as old as the medium itself, I am not interested in that particular discourse. Instead, it is not the truth of the image that intrigues me as much as it is the assumption that photography suggests it. The expectations of information received from a photograph differ greatly than from any other artistic medium. It is as if the tactile nature of the photo print (ink or emulsion laid onto substrate) suddenly disappears, and the object manifests self-evident. If a photograph is a window, you do not acknowledge the glass, as much as you peer past it.
Can a photographer, a capturer of the literal, become an abstractionist? Although I could scarcely put it into words or even acknowledge it, this aspiration has patiently haunted my creative practice. Having received a technical training that emphasized the apparent resoluteness of the photographic image, my practice of the last few years was predicated on the boundaries imposed by photographic thinking. I questioned whether my images were ever satisfactory enough as distinct visual objects. The growing discontent that I experienced towards photography arose from the struggle of wanting to translate an intrinsically literal visuality into a language that continued to employ the camera, but that could be more tactile, gestural, and abstract.
My thesis work manifests itself as a collection of cyanotype prints depicting snapshot photography alongside abstract compositions. I was moved towards the use of cyanotype emulsion after encountering the indigo textile work of Shihoku Fukumoto last year in Kurume, Japan. Though cyanotype initially emerged as a tonal proxy for the penetrating blues present within the indigo dyeing process, its connection to the history of early camera-less photography seemed all the more appropriate. As I experimented with the medium, I grew increasingly invested in cyanotype’s ability to engage with the tactile, and the freedom to compose negatives across its surface in real time.
The photographs depicted within these fields of blue are grainy, void of midtone, and broaching into the style of Showa era street photography. There is an urgency and unsettled nature to the images, though with a sensitivity towards the unnoticed and ethereal they hold a reverence for the mundane. Depictions of clouds, both intact and fragmented, float through the compositions. A quiet sea ebbs at a distant island. A partial view through window blinds, a birthday bouquet, a distorted reflection within a mirror. These images are directly pulled from the flow of my daily life, captured in passing on a smartphone camera. Despite its modest origins, a photograph embodies a deep, rich sublimity, in which I can fully connect to the intricacies of light and composition in daily life—to something that is perhaps even miraculous.
Adjacent to these diaristic images, abstract forms populate the cyanotype plane. They manifest as glowing points reminiscent of the celestial, or as formalist designs conversing with the decorative. I am interested in the way the subject of a photograph can no longer be self-evident—where attention can be drawn towards gesture, the quality of light, or towards a greater ambiance. By positioning my own imagery alongside abstracted forms, I seek to relate both visualities as capable of averting coherent subjecthood. These blueprints instill a surface tension, helping to release my pictures from the confines of an endless camera roll into a tactile one, and flattening the image so much so that it eliminates that feeling of falling into when looking at a photograph. To experience my work is to not seek its information, it is to participate in pure looking and consider what it means to witness the humble sublime.
Amidst the clarity and precision of the cyanotype prints, the need for the gesture of the hand has proved to be vital. My inclination towards craft and touch has had a relentless presence in my work, so much so, that a year ago my creative research unexpectedly led me towards ceramics. My ceramic work in all instances has manifested into some form of a vessel, with a focus on those of handheld size. The direct conversation between these seemingly disparate practices, even to me, still remains vague. Though it is worth noting that I have always been drawn towards vessels and the domestic within my still-life practice. Clay, in a way, behaves similarly to the cyanotype process. There is a directness of surface and possibility of utility that is evocative, particularly when I was at a point in my photography practice where the utility of my own images felt unclear. I would have not connected with clay to such an extent had I not been simultaneously dreading using the camera. At outer glance the cyanotypes and vessels appear unrelated, though I know in words that cannot yet come together that my tea cups and bowls are too, a product of photography.
Over these last few years, it has become apparent that I have been continually attempting to rewrite the mechanisms of my own photographic thinking—contending with my relationship to the image, my capacity to think with other mediums, as well as comprehend the significance of photography in how I metabolize my own life. I have only recently realized that the camera has always served me, even at times when it did not seem so. Despite my intellectual concerns of photography at large, I want to be honest and admit that my practice is and has been very much about me. Throughout the various stages of my life, photography has emerged in one way or another as a salve or as a catalyst towards acknowledging my innermost fears, ambitions, and hopes. The image was perhaps never the final intention, as much as it was the pursuit of its creation that brought me closer to a feeling of grounding and connection to everyday beauty in defiance of a tumultuous world pining for novelty and absolutes. If a photograph is a window, I get caught in its reflection.
-Susan Jablonski