Jonathan B. Smith

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Photoliminal
What began as a photographic exploration of the medical/scientific view has become a collection of photographs of a collection of objects. Delving into the philosophy of objects, one finds a rich history of thought, beginning with the etymology of the word object (latin objectus: something thrown before or presented to the mind) and tracing a path through Plato’s Realm of Forms to Kant and his ding-an-sein, up to Edward Weston’s peppers and modernist conceptions of photographic form. A contemporary reading of these varied references is found in the many theorists, like Jaques Derrida, who wonder at the connection of the reference to the referent, or whether there is even a connection at all.

Edward Weston wrote “With a medium capable of revealing more than the eye sees, ‘things in themselves’ could be recorded, clearly, powerfully…” He continues to say that those photographers who resort to tricks, the pictorialists, are sceptics and hardly photographers. He believed in the power of photography to faithfully represent Kant’s “thing-in-itself” and not only believed in the connection of the reference to the referent, but felt, perhaps, that the representation was as real as the referent. “ …the camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself…”

This collection of objects uses no “tricks” in its recording – no “impressionistic blur,” and yet the objects dance on the edge of description, first becoming one thing, then another. Many are perhaps identifiable, but not wholly descriptive. Shot on 35mm black and white film and printed in a color process, there is no other manipulation that takes place. They are references that never quite meet their referent; they are objects with which we are viscerally familiar, yet cognitively distanced; they are a collection of references thrown before the mind. They are, as Jasper Johns has said, “An object that tells of the loss, destruction, disappearance of objects. Does not speak of itself. Tells of others. Will it include them?”

VITAE

2009
Grand Duchy Petite Fours CD Cover
http://www.cookingvinyl.com/release_info.php?id=504

2009
Santa Fe Prize Nomination
Santa Fe Center for Photography

2008
Solo Exhibition – Neither/Nor
DIVA Art Gallery, Eugene, OR

2006
Body of Art
exhibition
Willoughby-Baltic Gallery
Somerville, MA

2004
Fact/Fiction Photography Competition
- Creative Arts Workshop, New Haven CT

2004
Society of Photographic Educators NW Regional MFA Competition

2003
Agora Gallery

SOHO International Art Competition

2003 SPE Northwest
16x20 Juried Competition
Photographic Center Northwest

2001 Laverne Krause Gallery
University of Oregon
Advanced Photography exhibition


Employment

Present -
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art,
University of Oregon
Preparator/Graphic Designer

2003 - 2004
University of Oregon
Graduate Teaching Fellow


EDUCATION

2001 - 2004 University of Oregon
MFA Fine Art Photography

1999 - 2001 University of Oregon
BA Fine Arts

1991-1995 Nazareth College of Rochester
B.A. Philosophy and German

1993 Bayerische Julius-Maximilians-Universität, Würzburg, Germany

1986-1990 Monroe Community College
A.A. History


Contact:

PO Box 50703
Eugene, OR 97405
541.954.5374

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