INTERVIEW w/ APRIL GERTLER

In early 2008, I received an email from the artist April Gertler. It was a friendly hello, saying that she had stumbled across my work online, and noted that we both were using a certain shade of yellow in our photo collage work. We began writing back and forth (discovering that we had both grown up in a small California town), and she was generous enough to allow me to turn our dialogue into an official TisT interview.

April's work combines photography (both her own and found imagery), drawing, and collage, often using all elements in one piece to create work that explores the fundamentals of each medium: color, line, space, etc. She has undertaken two serial web projects, 38 and Wager, and has recently begun to explore working with large-scale installations and on-site drawing. The following conversation took place via email, from March to November 2008.

For more information on April, please visit her website. Also, check out her current web project, Wager.

1. My Own Story and The Story That Is Within The Image

This is That: I would like to know a bit about your development as an artist. What first compelled you toward the visual arts, and what mediums or ideas captured your attention? Was there a moment, instant, image, etc., that changed something in you and propelled you in a certain visual direction? I've seen a book recently in which artists choose the first work of theirs that had a special weight and importance for them, in terms of their identity as artists. Was there a piece of yours that did this—where, when it was done, you went "Ah-ha!"?

April Gertler: What first compelled me to the arts—I can't really say that it was one thing in particular. I knew that I always wanted to make art—but I never took myself seriously until I was in my mid-20s. Actually I never took art classes until then as well. I was fascinated with creating things. Although that said I do remember an "A-ha" moment.

I had finally decided to take a photography class after I had finished University. I was out in the city (of San Francisco), shooting some black-and-white film for an assignment. It was Photo 101. The utter basics. I remember distinctly going to a doorway near Tosca (the Italian opera bar on Columbus) and seeing a man sleeping. He wasn't wearing shoes, a thin sheet was pulled over his entire body. I was amazed by the image of this man. The sheet was cut very unevenly—actually it looked like it had been ripped. As a result, there was a piece of thread that was by chance wrapped around his big toe—which looked like what you might find in a morgue—a string around the big toe. Although in this situation there was no tag attached to the thread.

It was an eerie site. I remember really contemplating the nature of photographing this situation. I wasn't sure if I should do it or not. In the end I raised my camera and shot the image. I only took one shot and quickly walked away because I had a feeling that he had heard the shutter click. I think the "A-ha" moment came then as I really felt a surge of energy within me to take that image.

I wanted that image more than anything in that moment and the energy of taking the shot was extremely powerful.







TisT: I love your description of the power and energy that came over you during that moment of photographing the sleeping man. Your work strikes me as being very intimate, at times even uncomfortably so, precisely because you use found photographs of families and people. Tapping into the kind of nostalgia of American moments seems to open up a door into a secret, inner world—and your appropriating them into your own work seems to both disfigure and elevate them. How much of this do you grapple or play with? You said: "I remember really contemplating the nature of photographing this situation. I wasn't sure if I should do it or not." Can you explain more about this feeling for you?

AG: There has to be a two-part answer to this question—since I make work both with my own images and with images that I find.

Years ago, while in art school, I was introduced to the work of the Berlin-based artist Joachim Schmidt. Right after the wall came down he did a project where he put an advertisement in a German magazine claiming to have a recycling program for old unwanted photographs. A body of work emerged from this project that included sorting through the tens of thousands of photographs that were sent to him. Through his sorting he found, as one might be able to imagine, a repetition of imagery; pictures of first birthdays, first dates, parties, holidays, first days of school, baby pictures and the list goes on and on. The pictures repeated themselves over and over again, of course with different people in different environments—but endlessly the same events were documented. His work became a collection of these repeated images—a socio-anthropological investigation on the visual variations of these themes.

I was really struck by the idea that (in the Western world) like it or not, we participate in a collective experience—which is and continues to be obsessively documented. As much as our lives are individually defined, we still adhere to and participate in rituals that are common within most families. That said, using other people's imagery for my own work has never been something I grappled with. Using those images is almost easier for me than making new images. I am particularly partial to the inevitable layering that happens, my own interpretation of the image I am using, which is layered on top of my personal memory of an experience. Therefore the images that I choose act on multiple levels; the first level of course is what the image is about—that family, that time, that place, then there is my interpretation of that image, finally that is coupled with a connection that image might have to my own story, or experience. It is at this point where it starts getting interesting to me; the image often acts like the fabric of the story—my own story and the story that is within the image—the marriage of those stories is where fiction weaves itself within reality.

The contemplation that I was eluding to regarding whether or not to photograph that homeless man is part of another process and also struggle as a photographer. I have never really felt comfortable photographing people I don't know, yet photographing people is something that is incredibly challenging and very mystifying for me. I am particularly intrigued by the action or moment of the event of photographing someone—maybe sometimes I am more intrigued by that feeling than the result! For me the moment is incredibly intimate in two very distinct ways; the sitter allowing themselves to be photographed and also me as the photographer—allowing them to witness my process of photographing them.

There is an incredibly intimate exchange of emotions and energy that happens for me. But of course that exchange can only work when both sides are willing to reveal themselves. I have been in situations where I have not wanted to reveal myself as a photographer and also of course sometimes the sitter—although they might (intellectually) allow me to photograph them—they actually subconsciously don't allow me to in the end. It is always a series of negotiations, and more often than not those negotiations are unspoken.





2. On Being Terribly Seduced By Other Peoples’ Photographs

TisT: Considering your background in photography, how have you come to doing the work you're doing now? What has been the trajectory of your artistic development and the points in your career that were turning places?

AG: The work that I am doing now—collage and drawing specifically—is a result of lots of starts and stops. My work has woven in and out of photography in one manifestation or another since I started making art. Initially when I first started art school, I was in the photography department. The only trouble was—I couldn't consistently buy paper or film. I was therefore relegated to figure out other ways to make images. I started collecting images from the flea market and assembling them together to create narratives that I would also write about. The collages were really rooted in nostalgic moments of Americana from the 1930s to the 1960s. I was terribly seduced by these photographs and the sensibility that went along with them. I worked with these images for quite awhile, for a good 5 years. Then I went to graduate school. This was a very important time for me and the development of my ideas on many levels—most specifically it brought me to Europe.

I moved away from collage at that time and started to make color photographic images. I thought it might be a good experiment to concentrate on color photography, which was an attempt to limit myself to one medium, working with concepts that used that medium and only that medium. That said I did go back to collage. It was funny—I felt like I was cheating on my photography. As though photography was my husband and collage was my lover...

Collage has always been something that has come to me very easily. I have a comfort with the materials in a way that is really different from color photography. I think it has a lot to do with the tactility of the materials in general. With a lot of prodding from a few fellow artists, I decided to explore collage more whole-heartedly in the last year. Since then I have been working almost exclusively with collage, drawing, and photography in the form of found imagery.





TisT: You mentioned constructing narratives with your work. I react to your pieces as if they are sort of poetic moments, bursts, or phrases, and the narrative there is poignant and captures something fleeting; for me, there is some kind of temporal quality in them. Can you talk about how your narratives appear to you? Do they happen before you actually start to create something visual? How do they develop once you are actually at work on your piece?

AG: This is a really interesting question for me, but it is sort of akin to what came first: the “chicken or the egg.” Over the last year—as I have gotten more and more involved in drawing and collage—I have become more conscious of the narratives. My 38 Project was a testimony to that: the process of understanding and re-interpreting narrative. I think I have become more fluent with the interpretation of a feeling or emotion that might have been integrated into an experience. There are of course moments when I am working and the narrative is developing as I am working through something. I flip back and forth between these two ways of working—being conscious of the narrative and then also working from a place of discovery. But there are also moments when I have a physical need to make something. The narratives or moments that I am working with become articulated through a stripping down process. I usually whittle down the elements in my mind of what is important to me about the moment, narrative or as you said “bursts,” that I am interested in. That can be about an emotion—a color, a form, a concept...that is really open for me. It is individually based on each work that I am doing.

I just returned from a residency in France where I spent time working with other people's narratives. This was a really important progression for me in terms of my work and also in terms of using narratives in my work. The process for this new project involved interviewing people who were from Niort, France, and then scanning in their family pictures from their family photo albums. Then I made works based on my own re-interpretation of their family stories using their images as a point of departure. It was a rich process for me—meeting people and hearing them tell me about their lives and the lives of their families, but still using the guise of the "found image" as a place to leave from.





3. The Spatial Presence of an Image

TisT: From what I can tell of your new work, you're playing with scale and space, blowing up smaller images into wallpaper and large installations. I've always found the idea of photography existing in three-dimensional space very intriguing, because it seems outside of the traditional two dimensions of the medium; also, it pushes it toward a new kind of interaction. Your work, being collage or other manipulated found imagery, seems to already push the boundaries of 2D; it becomes less a photograph and more an art object, put together by your hands, touched and created. It has a presence and weight within the space, and can be interacted with. You mentioned, in an earlier answer, your interest in the idea that we all share in a collective experience, and this, to me, seems to align with your new direction. Can you talk about your new work in terms of the scale of it, and what is inspiring you toward this? Are you interested in, I guess I'll call it, the spatial presence of your imagery?

AG: I find this question particularly interesting as I have been working really hard at attempting to answer these questions for myself over a long period of time. In the last half year I have been working with scale more than ever before in the form of on-site wall drawings. It has been a very interesting experience for many reasons. The thing that really inspires me to continue working like this is the physical command of space that a larger work demands. That sort of space then requires the viewer to consider their own body in relation to the work they are viewing. I find that really interesting—especially in relation to drawing. Inherent in sculpture comes the idea that the viewer is dealing with an object that, by the pure nature of it, has a connection to the person physically. That is one reason; the second reason is the idea of referencing daily life and the world outside of the gallery structure. Finally I guess I could say yes—I am interested in the spatial presence of my work.

Those points are specific for me in terms of why I am working on a larger scale. But an interesting by-product of this experience is actually making the work! All of a sudden the work commands a different energy from me of course because I am working physically. It is a much different experience to make a drawing with your arm as opposed to making a drawing with your whole body! That has also been really telling for me as I start to understand the work in a different way, even for myself. But for this very reason—I feel all of a sudden that my decisions are that much more weighty—everything has to be really considered and that is also very interesting.

TisT: We've already talked a bit about the importance of narrative in your work, and your inspirations around it during your residency this past summer. I'd like to know how these notions of narrative factor in with your new, larger-scale pieces. How does one tell a story on a large scale, or through a 3D space?

This makes me think of when I got to see your work in person, and was able to sort of flip through your portfolio much like a book—there was a kind of narrative implied just by the presentation. I imagine that viewing your new work would be a totally different experience; I would have to physically walk through a room and view these pieces that were nearly life-sized—I would no longer be able to hold them, bend over them to get a closer look, etc. Can you talk a bit about how you're bringing narrative and that sort of flow to the new work?

AG: Another thing that I have noticed about bringing my work to a larger scale is the need for being really clear with my ideas. I have found that my work has gotten more minimal as I have gone larger with some of the pieces. The minimalism is a direct result of wanting to be precise about the narrative—yet find a way to be open at the same time. As a result I have found that the work almost relies in many ways, on the viewer to "fill in the blanks".
But I just wanted to be clear here though—I think you are totally right when you say that the intimacy of the work is transformed through enlargement into a physical space—but that said, I am still working small. Rather what I am trying to do is combine the working sizes to concentrate on what the images or drawings actually might be needing. In essence I am trying to honor the materials more and facilitate that process instead of forcing the process in the same way every time. I want the ideas, materials and therefore method of working to act more specifically to the size that I am working with.