March 10-May 5 - von Liebig Art Center

Maggie Taylor, Girl with a bee dress, 2004, pigmented inkjet print, Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville; Gift of Jerry N. Uelsmann and Maggie Taylor

Husband and wife artists Maggie Taylor and Jerry Uelsmann create photographic images using two completely different techniques. Uelsmann montages or “builds” his photographs in a darkroom by exposing up to nine different black and white negatives onto a single sheet of photographic paper. Rather than work in a darkroom, Taylor assembles her images in layers using her computer and PhotoShop. She then prints the completed image with her state-of-the-art inkjet printer. This exhibition explores the two photographers’ work with large and small format images by Taylor and photographs by Uelsmann from the 1960s to the present.   

The Naples Art Association has partnered with the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida for this exhibition with additional artwork borrowed directly from each artist. One of the largest university art museums in the Southeast, the Harn has more than 6,200 works in its permanent collection and an array of temporary exhibitions. The museum’s permanent collections are focused on Asian, African, modern and contemporary art, as well as photography. The museum sponsors international and Florida-centric exhibitions. The Harn Museum of Art distinguishes itself among university art museums as a creative laboratory for innovation in the visual arts.  

This exhibition is generously sponsored by Vi at Bentley Village, Jackye and Curtis Finch of Naples, the Naples Daily News, Comcast, Happenings Art and Entertainment Magazine, WAVV 101.1-FM and Lite 93.7 FM. Exhibited in the Frederick O. Watson and Elizabeth & William Barrick Galleries.  

View a seleciton of images in the image gallery

The Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles recently produced the video “Digital Darkroom” featuring in-depth interviews with photographers including Jerry Uelsmann and Maggie Taylor. Click here to view the video on the Annenberg Space for Photography’s website.

Jerry Uelsmann, Dream Theater, 2004, gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 inches, Courtesy of the artist

Jerry Uelsmann

Jerry Uelsmann was born in Detroit in 1934. He studied photography at Rochester Institute and Indiana University and was deeply influenced by his instructors Ralph Hattersley, Minor White and especially Henry Holmes Smith, who introduced Uelsmann to the concept that photography can be used as a vehicle for self-expression. At the time people did not consider photography to be an experimental art form, but considered it a craft with the functional purpose of recording people, places and events.

In 1960 Uelsmann began teaching at the University of Florida and in 1974 he was awarded a graduate research professorship. Uelsmann received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967 and a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in 1972. He is a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain. Over the last 50 years his work has been exhibited in nearly 150 solo exhibitions in the United States and internationally. Uelsmann’s photographs are held in the permanent collections of many museums worldwide including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the Chicago Art Institute; the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House; the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; the Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris; the National Museum of American Art in Washington; the Moderna Museet in Stockholm; the National Gallery of Canada; the National Gallery of Australia; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the National Galleries of Scotland; the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona; the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography; and the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto.

Uelsmann is a master of photo montage and a pioneer of photo manipulation. He finds his source material in many locations and while traveling. Some of the objects in his work are photographed in the studio against a white screen or black velvet to eliminate a background and permit the object to be inserted or “collaged” seamlessly with other images in the photograph. Uelsmann uses a series of up to 8 enlargers in his darkroom to “build” his photographs. He adds the individual component images from each negative to his photograph by making a timed exposure at each enlarger. After images from all negatives have been exposed onto the photographic paper, it is stopped, fixed and rinsed in wash basins. 

When I studied photography at RIT each darkroom had one enlarger. Then when I started teaching we had a group darkroom. I was still using one enlarger, which was labor intensive for multiple printing. One day while I was waiting for some prints to wash, I looked across at the enlargers and thought to myself that if I had the negatives in different enlargers and simply move the paper, the speed with which I could explore things or line them up would increase a hundred times. That was the moment that changed the way I worked with multiple images.       Jerry Uelsmann

Maggie Taylor

Maggie Taylor was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1961. At age 11 she moved to Florida with her parents and sister and now considers Florida her native state. In 1983 she graduated Cum Laude from Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy and shortly thereafter began graduate studies at the University of Florida in Gainesville. In 1987 she received her Master of Fine Arts degree and in 1989 married Jerry Uelsmann. In 1995 a representative from Adobe approached Uelsmann to create a poster for the company using Photoshop. Equipment and expert help were provided. Taylor offered her assistance. She read the Photoshop manual and became intrigued with the entire process.  Uelsmann created the photograph for the poster before returning to his work in the darkroom while Taylor began experimenting with the computer and Photoshop software. By 1998, after working for 12 years as a still-life photographer, Taylor began using the computer exclusively to create her images.

In 1996 and again in 2001 Taylor was awarded a State of Florida Individual Artist’s Fellowships. In 2004 she won the Santa Fe Center for Photography’s Project Competition. Taylor’s images have been exhibited in one-person exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally and are held in numerous public and private collections including The Art Museum, Princeton University, Princeton; The Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge; the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Museum of Photography, Seoul, Korea. Her work is featured in numerous books including Adobe Photoshop Master Class: Maggie Taylor’s Landscape of Dreams, published by Adobe Press in 2005; Solutions Beginning with A, Modernbook Editions, Palo Alto, 2007; and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Modernbook Editions, Palo Alto, 2008.

Taylor collects 19^th Century tintypes* which she finds in antique stores, at flea markets and on the internet. The figures in her photographs originated as tintype portraits, which she captured using a flatbed scanner. Other images she photographs, scans or acquires are combined with the figures using her computer and the Adobe Photoshop program. Typically, Taylor works with 40 to 60 individual image layers. She imports images, configures, filters and otherwise manipulates them before combining or “flattening” then into a single photographic image, which she prints on a state-of-the-art Epson inkjet printer.

Most people relate to the computer in their everyday life as a desk tool. You’re in college writing papers, or you’re at home paying bills using the computer, or doing email on the computer. I think people have trouble seeing how you can sit at it and use it in a totally creative way. It just so happens that I love sitting at a desk. It doesn’t bother me that I might switch from typing a letter to someone to working on an image. I love that all my work happens in one place.                       Maggie Taylor

*  Also known as a melainotype or ferrotype, a tintype is a photograph made by creating a direct positive on a sheet of iron metal that is blackened by painting, lacquering or enameling and is used as a support for photographic emulsion. The process requires no drying time. In the 19^th and early 20^th Centuries photographers often worked outside fairs and carnivals offering to make pocket-size portraits.