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B I L L A R N O L D

Contact sheet

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This is the seventy-second exhibition catalogue in a seriesproduced by Light Work since 1985.

ISSN: 1064-640x • ISBN: 0-935445-31-5Contents copyright © 2003 Light Work Visual Studies, Inc.,

except where noted. All rights reserved.

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L IGHT WORK

BiLLarnoLd

Apr i l 4– June 30 , 2003Recept ion : Apr i l 11 , 6–8 Pm

E v E r y d ay P o E t r y

2

“I stopped to look at where I was.” This simple obser-vation has informed and crystallized Bill Arnold’s approach to making pictures for nearly forty years. He believes there is poetry in prosaic everyday occur-rences, and that his role as an artist is to find and fix those moments into pictures. In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, Arnold, along with Tom Zimmermann, Christian Sunde, Steve Smith, Ingeborg Gerdes, Dennis Hearne, Elaine Mayes, Jerry Burchard, and oth-ers, pursued photography as a means of creating personal documents where atmosphere, gesture, and mood were prized over the recording of facts, or the investigation of a particular subject or theme. At that time photography had finally been acknowledged as an important means of artistic expression and Arnold and others were eager to add to the medium’s potential by turn-ing casual observations into moments of personal clarity, and by pushing and exploring new tools and techniques.

In 1970 while teaching photogra-phy at the San Francisco Art Institute, Arnold became fascinated with a microfilm reading and printing machine that he saw in a local library. The machine was manufactured by the Itek Corporation in Rochester, NY and designed to view microfilm on a large desktop monitor. Unlike other microfilm read-ers, the Itek machine could also produce instant prints up to twenty-four inches wide, from microfilm, using a photographic stabilization process. Arnold thought the Itek machine could be a great teaching tool, and with the help of Jerry Burchard, his mentor at the Art Institute, he convinced the administrators at the school to purchase one for the photography department.

Since the machine was designed to print from microfilm, Arnold had to make several modifications in order to make prints from 35mm negatives. The modifications were successful and Arnold eventually

received a patent for the vacuum easel, he designed for the machine, that enabled it to produce prints similar in quality to ones that could be achieved in a traditional darkroom. Arnold began to use the Itek machine in his classes, allowing students to take pictures, process the film, and produce prints for discussion and critique all within a three-hour class.

Arnold began to use the Itek machine more and more in his personal work. Combined with

the Bell & Howell 35mm half-frame camera he favored, which produced seventy-two pictures on a thirty-six exposure roll, Arnold was able to develop a more immediate connection between the act of making a photo-graph, and evaluating its merits, in one continuous process of creation and critique.

One of Arnold’s mentors at the Art Institute was former FSA photographer and legendary teacher John Collier. His advice to Arnold, that one had to, “feed the photograph back,” or continue to build on the one moment captured, to realize the next moment’s potential, was a lesson that has guided Arnold’s work for nearly four decades. The half-

frame camera and the Itek printer became the means for Arnold to continually “feed the photograph back,” and his desire to “cheer for life in all its parts,” became his inspiration for celebrating that discovery.

Arnold also proved to be as innovative in his thinking about the public display of photography as he had been in his discovery of the Itek machine. In 1973 he organized the Boston Bus Show, in which one-thou-sand of his Itek prints were displayed on the interior advertising space of forty-four Boston to Cambridge city buses. After he organized a similar show, on four-hundred buses in New York City, that included his work and the work of dozens of other photog-raphers, the idea was quickly disseminated to other

Self-portrait with ice cream 1967

cities. To this day CEPA Gallery in Buffalo continues to have a regular program of photography exhibitions on city buses, and many similar kinds of displays can be found across the country on a less regular basis.

Bill Arnold came of age as a photographer at a time when the potential for the medium, as a means of personal expression and creative discovery, was exploding. For a number of individuals that potential meant always having a 35mm rangefinder camera at the ready, and making black and white prints with filed-out negative carriers, that produced defined black frames around each print, to show that nothing was cropped from the precise perspective of the photog-rapher’s field of view. Photographers like Arnold helped fuel the enthusi-asm for art photography and then stood back, like poets withdrawing, as the medium advanced to embrace new strategies, techniques, and poli-tics to become one of the most elas-tic and malleable means of expres-sion available to artists today.

Although the three Itek machines, that Bill Arnold still owns are safely packed away in the studio complex he owns and operates in Florence, MA–the paper to make the prints is no longer available–he continues to make pictures with his 35mm full-frame and half-frame cameras. This exhibition includes photographs made from 1967 to 2003, but can only be considered a partial retrospective. Over five-thousand images were reviewed for inclusion in the exhibition, and his tremendous production and consistency invites fur-ther investigation.

In just one example of how Arnold’s photographs invite further investigation, consider the image on the cover of this catalogue titled, Embrace, 1976. In subject, structure, and form it bears a close resem-blance to Alfred Eisenstaedt’s celebrated photograph

of a sailor and nurse kissing, in Times Square, on VJ Day in 1945. The clarity of this moment of embrace in Eisenstaedt’s photograph is enhanced by the cel-ebration of the circumstances in which it was made, and thus he both defined and preserved a vital his-torical event. Arnold is from a generation of photog-raphers whose war was Vietnam, which sparked pub-lic protests and civil disobedience, with the liberating effect of encouraging the discovery and investigation

of personal freedom and expression for many citizens. That such out-ward social upheaval produced such an inward personal look by so many artists is as ironic as it is telling. Just as Eisenstaedt’s photograph defined a national identity for one era, so did Arnold’s for another.

Bill Arnold continues to measure his own pulse by the beat of the world around him, and in his attempt to embrace the poetry of everyday life, he has produced a body of work that offers clarity and celebrates introspection, emotion, and mystery.

Jeffrey HooneDirector

Light Work

3

Self-portrait with Cast 1997

4

Train with Wiper, 1982

5

Floating Austin, 1990

6

Deliver y Bike, 1982*

7

California Steps, 1985

8

Roosevelt Island, 2003

9

Shayna Rae Peavey, 1985

10

Nude in Tub, 1975

11

Donna McNeil in Her Fiat, 1980

12

Steve, Diane, and Honey, 1970

13

Lisa and Grace, 1997

14

Boys Punching, 1975

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Saskia and Lenore, 1978

16

Rick and Mar y, 1998

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Parfait, 1978*

18

Mechanic , 1978

19

Steve Paxton, 1985*

20

Target, 1987

21

4th of July House, 1970*

Tina Lipkin, 1984

22

23

Steve Smith on Pay Phone, 1970

24

Mimi Gross Drawing, 1978*

25

Chase Twichell, 1983

26

Oswald, 1974*

27

Tango in Amsterdam, 1990*

28

Janet Borden Driving, 1974

29

Haymarket Cafe, 1995

30

Snowball Fight, 1994

31

Celica in Snow, 1996

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Boy on Quilt, 1983

33

Portland to New York, 1996

Uprooted Tree, 1980

34

35

Julie Berenzweig, 1988

36

Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, 1974

37

Tavern on the Green, 1993

38

Cup and Purse, 1975*

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Chinese Takeout, 1977*

40

Sycamore, 1987

41

Stockholm Stairs , 1990

42

Pouring Tea, 1976*

43

Cape Bridge, 1995

San Francisco Art Institute Tree, 1971

44

45

Boston Common Tree, 1996

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Ralph Gibson, John Collier, and Robert Frank, 1971

47

Vendor, 1999

48

Everyday Poetry

Impatiently watching as hands slipped throughout his neatly packed suitcase, the traveler finally blur t-ed out, "What do you think I’ve got in there, a bomb?” They led him away. He had simply forgot-ten where he was.

When I go through my contact sheets, each frame on every roll of film means that I stopped to look at where I was. Most of the time I am too busy. But through a combination of predisposition, schooling and habit I do sometimes stop to see where I am.

As a photographer, I believe that what I seek is always right around me. With my pictures I am tr ying to convince you of the same. It is for me an immense delight to find a very interesting picture outside someone’s door or in the kitchen. When I show them the picture, I am saying this is where we live. I know that wonderful pictures do not happen every minute of every day outside of everyone’s door. They only happen when you see where you are.

Bill Arnold

I was born in New York, but came of age in San Francisco. I learned r igor in the

East and patience in the West. I think like an Easterner, talk like a Westerner. I’ve

had three great teachers: Jack Welpott, Jerr y Burchard, and John Collier. Jack taught

me abut the magic of photography; Jerr y to be present, and John to give it all back.

Being a photographer in San Francisco in the 60’s was a little like being a cowboy,

all independent and lean, but part of a clan. Jerr y was head of the Department and

I was his assistant. We invited ever ybody in. Those were heady times. We just kept

saying yes. But I wanted to go back east. Met Elaine Mayes, went East. There

I kept working with my darkroom machine, the modified Itek read-printer. Made

1,000 prints for the inside of forty-four buses in Boston. Later organized a Bus Show

on 400 New York City buses. Got grants. Sold prints to collectors and museums. All

the while working my way up the academic ladder and waiting for a nod from a

museum. But photography was changing. My mentors Bresson, Atget, Frank, Kertesz,

Vroman, Fox Talbot, Levitt, Lartigue, Watkins, all had been eclipsed. And my personal

life was changing. Elaine and I divorced. To provide myself with financial security and

a place to work, I renovated a large, old brick factor y building in a small town in

Western Massachusetts. I have my studio there still. Being in a factor y ever yday is

relentless. Ever ybody is always working. To get away from the vigor of my life I go to

California. Things slow down. I see familiar people. I feel at home. When I come back,

it’s to New York where I can glide through the city on my bike and feel at home.

(front cover) Embrace, 1976* (back cover) Tracks out Back Window, 1982

* Indicates that the image is an 14 x 18" Itek print.

All other images are 14 x 18" silver gelatin prints

Pigmented inkjet prints on rag paper, 20 x 20" each

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Contact Sheet 121: Bill Arnold

Paperback: 48 pagesPublisher: Light Work (March 31, 2003)

ISBN: 0-935445-31-5

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