gary emrich

In the photographic project TRANSFICTIONS, I am exploring the transformation of photographic images, representing their journey from their original creation and purpose to digital and prompting contemplation of our evolving relationship with photographic purpose, context and methodology.

The project illustrates the various stages an archive of vintage press photographs has undergone - from their initial silver print to photo offset to microfiche and to their eventual digitization. This digitization is represented by ubiquitous Apple product boxes; creating a dialogue between the original photographs and that unique contemporary packaging, serving as a metaphor for our society's complex relationship with technology and the constant push and pull between the past and the present. Each step in this evolution has left its mark on the images, altering their appearance and context. The application of red rubylith, an analog graphic design masking tool, highlights the blending of traditional and contemporary methods.

At its core, this project serves as a visual testament to the transformative power of technology and photography's journey from the original to the digital space—an exploration that challenges us to reflect on our own role, both as guardians of the past and participants in the digital frontier.

  ALL CONSUMED is a series of landscape photographs fabricated with advertising imagery of lush greenery, blue skies and snow-capped mountains from the plastic wrappers on multipacks of bottled water. Addressing how the bottled water industry uses marketing tools to drive Americans to consume 50 billion bottles of water a year at 1000 times the cost of tap water, this project combines a marketing image of nature's purity with plastic waste products to call out the hypocrisy of consumer culture. This bottled water culture is not unique to America however. These landscape photographs are made from packaging from European, Asian and Middle Eastern water companies as well and addresses the impact of branding by the bottled water industry on consumers as we move toward the inevitability of water as a commodity worldwide.

To make these ideas real, I layer a hard, transparent plastic "blister pack" with water bottle packaging on a light table, fill the plastic depressions with bottled water and photograph the composition with a view camera. I have chosen to combine two of the first things we throw away, inverting the value of the things consumers buy by preserving and elevating the disposable and ubiquitous packaging and plastics to make trash an object of desire and beauty. 

 Water as a commodity has been a subject in my art practice for over twenty years. Living in the high desert of the American West, my perspective on the value of water is shaped by watching water rights bought and sold and knowing that the geography of Colorado dictates that all the water eventually leaves and none flows back into the state.

The photographic series HERALDRY continues my interest in plastic consumer product packaging. I use plastic shopping bags, water bottle case wrappers, vegetable bags and other consumer packaging, combining them to create coats of arms for contemporary times. To make these ideas real, I layer hard, transparent plastic “blister packs” on top of these arrangements on a light table, fill the plastic depressions with bottled water and photograph the compositions with a view camera. I have chosen to combine two of the first things we throw away, inverting the value of the materials consumers buy by preserving and elevating the disposable and ubiquitous packaging and plastics to make trash an object of desire and beauty.

The FIREWATER SUITE challenges mythic notions of the West. For the project, I acquired vintage liquor decanters of Western American icons and combined them with backgrounds appropriated from contemporary water bottle labels. With titles such as “Sheriff with Ice Mountain Spring,” these visual clichés suggest an idealized depiction of the historic West; where branding and selling of bottled water in this century carries on the laughable stereotypes of whiskey decanters in the last.  

In THE MECHANICAL series, I bring images, materials and found objects together; placing them in proximity and creating a new narrative where objects tell stories. 

LET THE MATERIALS DRIVE THE THINKING is an ongoing series of mixed media artworks combining found objects with photography. The imagery is selected in direct response to the objects upon which the photograph is reproduced such as abstracted paintings or water falls on house paint brushes or forms in nature such as nerve cells or waves exaggerated or reduced to fit on eyeglasses. The artwork releases me from traditional photographic perspective, flatness, scale and texture, propelling the photographic image into a unique illusionistic realm taking on the added appearance of sculpture or painting.

The Crossings project is a photographic study on the interaction between urban pedestrians; capturing the moment when personal space is compromised. I began the project as a contrasting working process to the labor-intensive/highly controlled photographic fabrications that have been the foundation of my studio practice for the past 35 years. When looking at the photographs, I found tendencies that were fascinating; specifically how at the moment when people cross paths in the urban world, their gaze is directed forward outside the area around them. Individuals looking into the distance to perhaps avoid contact with strangers creating a safety mechanism that says, "If I don't acknowledge there close to me, I'm safe." I enjoy working in the street with its energy and spontaneity. Throughout this practice, I have found myself to be more aggressive in my approach; placing myself and my camera within the same zone as my subjects, engaging in a dance among three individuals.

When rephotographing imagery purloined from the usual mass media sources, I become yet another in a long line of editor/artists who shape the way we perceive and value history and culture.