Photography – Beyond the Real
April 15 - May 25
On display in The Meetinghouse Gallery
Photography – Beyond the Real
photographs by Thomas Carroll
The Gallery is open Tuesdays – Sundays 8:00 am – 4:00 pm for viewing. (Closed Mondays).
An opening reception was held Sunday, April 6 from 2-4 pm.
Artist’s Statement
I am an experimental photographer. My art is influenced by my experience as a student filmmaker at Binghamton University, NY, 1971-1974. I studied avant-garde cinema under Ken Jacobs, Larry Gottheim, Peter Kubelka, Nicolas Ray, Jonas Mekas, Hollis Frampton, Stan Brakhage and other visiting filmmakers and artists. I learned the Art of Seeing and developed an appreciation for arranging shapes in space and time.
The kinetic energy I see from the play of light interacting with surfaces attracts my imagination with the possibilities for making art. Many of the photographs I take become a collection of images which I save and later overlay in the camera. The result of the marriage of photographs creates a montage that transcends each of the individual photographs. The images become fused into a new reality… an image the naked eye did not see. It is a fantasy for the imagination.
The joy for me in this production is to see the unseen and perhaps discover a deeper meaning and sensuality that arises form a subconscious awareness and reveals something about our time, our past and perhaps our future. I aspire to include elements of mystery, magic, truth, beauty and existentialism in my art. The development of something original that may possibly add to the vocabulary of art and photography motivates me to push the boundaries of the medium.
I began by double exposing 35mm film in 1979. I would rewind the film in the camera and shoot again. It was often hit or miss. In 2015 I started using a Nikon digital camera with an overlay feature. This camera allows me to collect images and later overlay them in the camera to create a unique image. The overlay and other digital variables expand the experimental possibilities of photography. I use Adobe Lightroom to attain the color, clarity, illumination and structure that I want for the final image
I am influenced by many artists of many styles and schools of art. I am especially inspired by Man Ray’s vision of experimental photography as well as the artistic freedom he derived from his friendship with Marcel DuChamp and his association in Paris with the artists of Dada, Futurism and Surrealism. Some other important influences for my work are perhaps Fernand Leger, Antoni Gaudi, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Jackson Pollock, choreographer George Balanchine and many movie directors including Federico Fellini, Georges Melies, Eric von Stroheim, Busby Berkeley, Luis Bunuel, Salvador Dali and others. My approach to the artistic process is also influenced by the philosophy of Carl Jung and his writings about art and the “Collective Subconscious.”
View more of Thomas Carroll’s work on Instagram
