In conjunction with the
group show, "Dark States,"
art collector, writer, and
blogger James Wagner
(www.jameswagner.com)
interviewed Stephen about
his work.
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James Wagner: Can you say something about the relationship between the large image of a “king wave” and the much smaller one which documents the name of a part of a cemetery?
Stephen Hilyard: All of my work relates in some way to this idea of the sublime, usually via some more specific subject or story. In this case the subject is death Here’s part of the statement I have online for this piece, which covers it pretty well I think.:
“King Wave” brings together two conflicting approaches to the big issue, the last issue, death. On the one hand there is the urge to glamorize the subject, this lies at the heart of any understanding of the sublime. Mountaineers, divers and other adventurers can not deny that risking death whilst surrounded by the overwhelming beauty of the natural world is an important part of their motivation. Whilst this may seem to be a particularly male point of view as far as mountaineering is concerned, the same can not be said for diving, particularly free diving. Many of the world leaders in this most dangerous of sports are women, they personify the glamour of the sport in their physical beauty combined with the great risks that they take. A few days before I made the original wave photographs at Cape Naturaliste I was diving at the Ningaloo reef. While swimming with whale sharks and manta rays I pushed the limits of my own free diving abilities. Once below the surface the free diver finds herself in a floating world of incredible beauty, but there is also no doubt that she is also slowly dying every second that she is down there. I experienced this myself, and it was still fresh in my mind as I photographed the waves.
In contrast to the sublime effect of the wave images, the second element in each of the “King Wave” pieces recognizes the shear banality of death. This aspect of each piece speaks to the point of view not so much of those who choose to risk death, but of those left behind by it. When I first came across the list of cemetery sections as they appear in the Thomas Guide (a street map of Los Angeles) they seemed to create a poem that was both funny and tragic, in that they so plainly fail in what they are trying to do: to come to terms with death in a way that makes it seem rational, reasonable even. As well as the glamour of death “King Wave” is about all the ways that we try to deal with loss. Of course these attempts will always fail, there is no way to encapsulate death, regret and guilt in a way that lets us put it neatly away, but I found these romantic landscape descriptions stenciled on concrete curb stones poignant in their banality, and very sad.
JW: When you talk or write that you are addressing the unreliability of the photographic image, how important is it for the viewer to understand more than the fact that the camera can be used much as an ink pot or paint box is, that is, as a very flexible drawing instrument not really that different from the older tools, and capable of the same fantasies? In an earlier, less sophisticated world, even low-tech representations of reality were often mistaken for reality itself.
SH: I think that the idea that the camera can lie is well established in our culture by now, we all watch TV and movies and we all know about the magic of computers. Even the idea that the camera must lie may not be so strange to most people. However, I think that there is a physiological immediacy to vision that over rules what we know, so we can still be amazed, and gratified, by illusions that we know on a conscious level to be just that. This makes the digital simulation or manipulation of still and moving images a powerful tool for an artist who wants to seduce his audience, as I do. At the same time the fact that we know we are enjoying this “experience” that is not of the “real” always raises the question of whether there really is a “real” in the first place.
JW: Is there a political element in your warning about the untrustworthiness of photographic knowledge?
SH: No, I think that all knowledge is untrustworthy, not just the photographic. This is only a political fact in as much as it involves people, but it’s not news. It’s just the sea we all swim in.
JW: Cemeteries and other allusions to or images of death have been prominent in much of your work, and you’ve written that all of your art relates in some way to the idea of the sublime. Should we see the juxtaposition of these two things as only accidental, or should it be understood as a deliberate statement, closer to an equation?
SH: This is a deliberate statement, the most well known nineteenth century definition of the sublime links it to the coexistence of terror and beauty in a way that reinforces a sense of the viewers own mortality. I know this has often been a part of the experiences that have lead me to make this work. King Wave makes specific reference to this by presenting the waves as both beautiful and threatening. Much of my recent work deals with the ways that we try (and fail) to deal with the profound, and death is one of the subjects that fall into that category of the profound.
JW: I believe you’ve referred to these works as belonging somehow to the landscape (or seascape) tradition in Western art, and yet from among all the possible subjects you’ve chosen an exceptionally ephemeral one. Is it because an almost mythic wave is just about the most difficult subject to portray without serious artifice?
SH: I hadn’t really thought of that myself, I was more interested in the equivalence between the wave and the mountain as forms. I wanted to make these waves feel like mountains in some way, so that their veracity as waves would be to some extent undermined. I wanted a certain static feel which is not what you want if you are trying to convince someone that this is a “freeze frame” of a real wave in motion. This adds to the slightly off kilter synthetic feel of the image, and conflates the two great clichés of the sublime tradition, the mountain landscape, and the stormy seascape.
However, now that you mention, I like your observation; an image of a wave has an inherent artificiality because, unlike the landscape, it is a frozen image of a moving event. No one ever sees that freeze-frame with their own eyes, but we accept it when the camera or the painter gives it to us. We take it for granted that we see our world through other eyes.
“Dark States” Photographs by Jesse Burke, Bill Finger, and Stephen Hilyard; an exhibition at Platform Gallery, Seattle, November 25 to December 31, 2024
All content copyright 2010 Platform Gallery LLC and the artists.
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