Mike Andrew McLean: The Whites

November - December 2010

 

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Etymologically, photography means writing or drawing with light, and as such it is a mad-scientific endeavor. Light as a physical phenomenon both reveals our surroundings and obscures our sight, and traditional photographic processes reflect this polarization. In allowing for correct exposure, light immediately darkens film. Images result from a correlated dual with this immaterial ingredient: measured parts avoidance, allowance and alteration.

This series represents an exploration of the subject of whiteness – not necessarily white pictures, but a study of how things become white when photographed. Though some of the images represent objects that are indeed chromatically void, other subjects become white only when photographed in a monochromatic process, such as a propane flame on a two burner camp-stove or a vintage wicker lampshade in a non-descript budget motel.

 

Beyond their whiteness, many of the physical subjects of these photographs are material things in the process of disappearing: a bar of soap, an observatory now unused, a boarded law office. Similarly, analogue photography is approaching obsolescence. The images in this series were all made using a rarefied form of production: 4x5 sheet film exposed through a camera manufactured half a century ago, then hand processed, printed and toned. But the subjects and the method fit the form. It is through photographs that we are allowed to see – again and with staunch fidelity – that which no longer exists.