Sumeet Banerji & The Shroomscapes Series
By examining our world from the viewpoint of a Portobello Mushroom, Sumeet Banerji's Shroomscapes strives to challenge how we see and interpret beauty.
Each photograph begins with Sumeet zooming in on his fungal subjects, giving the viewer a new awareness of its structure and design.
Using only a cylindrical pinhole camera with 120mm film, Sumeet produces his images using a 2 hour exposure time. The result – beautiful, detailed photographs that leave you wanting more.
. . .
After spending the summer working on Shroomscapes during his residency at Dickerman Prints, Sumeet sat down with us to chat about photography, pinhole cameras, life, and mushrooms.
To experience Sumeet's work, please join us on Thursday, September 28, 2017, at Dickerman Prints Gallery for an opening night reception for The Residents. (RSVP HERE)
DICKERMAN PRINTS GALLERY: How did you get started in photography?
SUMEET BANERJI: "As a child, I practiced drawing in an obsessive way. I was a little nuts. I felt it was foundational to establishing a visual language, like if I could learn how to draw, I would be able to speak through pictures. Drawing trains you how to communicate where things are in space. It makes you understand how to make something look large or small. When you study drawing, you are really learning how the human brain processes the visual field.
Drawing was my start in photography. I think that my photographic work now is often a deliberate manipulation of the perceived scale and viewpoints of things. These trends in my photographs are in large part due to my drawing practice."
DPG: What does photography mean to you?
SB: "For me, it’s a kind of puzzle, a way to challenge the mind. You have to be able to look at a three dimensional visual field and have an intuition about how it is going to flatten visually.
Using a pinhole camera with film, the way I shot the Shroomscapes, there was no viewfinder so I couldn’t see what I was doing at all. I calculated and visualized what I could–after that it was a complete mystery until I developed the film."
DPG: What has your biggest challenge been as a photographer?
SB: "I want people to come back to my pictures many times and always find new things. That’s the basic aim: to make a picture that doesn’t lose its impact over time. I’ve found the best way to do this is through my editing process.
Often, I won't look at the pictures I've taken for a long time, creating the possibility of an emotional disconnection. It has to feel like someone else’s work before I can be objective. In the case of The Shroomscapes, I didn’t look at them for five years. If I look at work I’ve made after a long time and still feel an emotional connection to it, I put it out."
DPG: With your shroomscape series- what was your process with the pinhole camera? What were some of the challenges of this project for you?
SB: "The Shroomscapes are made with extremely low tech items. There is no post processing/manipulation. The prints show exactly what was captured on film. The images were made with a cylindrical box (pinhole camera), a portobello mushroom and 120mm film. The warping (in this case straightening) effect is from how the film was wound. The pinhole camera was put right inside the portobello mushroom, within an inch of the stalk so there was very little light. The film had to be exposed for two to three hours.
It is a photographic take on the very old tradition of still life painting. The long exposures made it like oil painting where the image could be manipulated slowly and deliberately.
There is an essay called 'In Praise of Shadows' by the novelist Junichiro Tanizaki that talks about the beauty of shadows and dark spaces. I wanted to capture an image that was in almost total darkness, showing us something from the real world that we can only see through the photographic process–darkness and shadows.
The images that resulted were tonally delicate. Small shifts and inconsistencies in the printing dramatically change the impact of the images. Gabriel, Seth and Garnell at the studio were able to bring the pictures to life in the real world in a very special way."
DPG: What is the future of this body of work?
SB: "I want to expand the series, take more Shroomscapes. Possibly a survey of different species of mushrooms taken with pinhole cameras. I also want to create a series of Cabbagescapes, Avocadoscapes, and maybe even Flowerscapes."
DPG: Do you have any new projects you’d like to tell us about?
SB: "I am starting to release my pictures in a series of volumes. It's going to be a collection of my photographic work in books with small pigment prints inserted into the books. It's a good way to see and own all the work in physical form.
Volume 1 contains four series (including the Shroomscapes) with essays and is coming out this month."
To see more of Sumeet Banerji's work and for contact information, please visit his website.
Igniting A Revolution: An interview with Kelly Johnson
For fifteen years, Kelly Johnson has been documenting progressive movements.
From the climate movement, to Black Lives Matter, the fight to increase minimum wage, Kelly Johnson aims to show humans healing the sick systems and institutions we ourselves created.
We recently sat down with Kelly to discuss her time as an artist-in-residence at Dickerman Prints, as well as her thoughts on photography, life, and the revolution. To experience Kelly's work, please join us for the opening night reception of The Residents.
Thursday, September 28, 2017
6:00 - 9:00pm
RSVP HERE
DICKERMAN PRINTS GALLERY: What portfolio or project are you currently working on during your residency at Dickerman Prints?
KELLY JOHNSON: "I am working on a project called Direct Action, depicting activists working for various issues by stopping business as usual."
DPg: Can you tell us one of your favorite stories from your life as a photographer?
KJ: "One of my favorite times I experienced as an activist/documentary photographer was my time at #Occupy SF. I slept in a tent in downtown SF for 3 months and built relationships with activists all over the bay."
DPg: I’m sure, like most of us, you have a point in time where photography caught a hold of you. When did you become a photographer in earnest?
KJ: "As a child I moved 18 times by the time I was 18 so I was always saying goodbye to friends and family so I was always taking photos. When I was 21 I started working at a lab and getting shooting gigs and started my own business and one day I realized omg I’m a photographer. I was 25 at the time and have been shooting professionally ever since."
DPg: Out of your movement portfolio, do you have one in particular that was your favorite to shoot?
KJ: "The bay bridge image is my most popular and famous image and I was very honored to be invited to that action. I will say I was so excited that I did not shoot that much that day so I was lucky to get such an iconic image."
DPG: You do abstract painting as well. Which medium do you prefer and why?
KJ: "My abstract work is photoshop collage of images that I do various things to in photoshop. I have worked in oils and acrylic with collage but photoshop is so fun and unlimited."
DPG: Do you have any suggestions for those who want to get involved with shooting movements?
KJ: "The reason I document the progressive movement is because it is the single most important movement in human history. The life and health of the species is resting on the success or failure of the humans who stand up to save us all. If we fail we are done here. So my advice is care."
DPG: Any new projects that you have in the works?
KJ: "After being in the bay for 5 years now, I have decided to restart my portrait business here in the bay. I am very interested in working with local artists and doing editorial portraits that are interesting and unique, that the artist and I build in collaboration. I have already started working with a couple artists but have yet to start shooting."
To see more of Kelly Johnson's work and for contact information, please visit her website.
An Interview with Jordan Reznick
Meet Jordan Reznick (pronoun: they) — photographer, scholar, activist, educator, and artist-in-residence at Dickerman Prints.
Jordan's passion is photographing communities of people with whom they are intimate: exploring both the agency and vulnerability of their subjects.
Jordan Reznick's Queer Babes series — which is the centerpiece of their residency at Dickerman Prints — was recently exhibited at Aperture Foundation in New York and Romer Young Gallery in San Francisco, as well as being honored with a feature in Vice i-D Magazine.
Some of Jordan's other work includes a series documenting a cooperative community in Oregon — where they lived — and an in-depth exploration of their immediate and extended family.
Jordan received a BFA in Photography from New York University, and an MFA in Photography and an MA in Visual & Critical Studies from California College of the Arts. Currently, Jordan is a PhD Candidate in Visual Studies at UC Santa Cruz.
To experience Jordan's work, please join us on Thursday, September 28, 2017, at Dickerman Prints Gallery for an opening night reception for The Residents. (RSVP HERE)
Dickerman prints gallery: WHEN DID YOU GET STARTED WITH PHOTOGRAPHY?
Jordan Reznick: "My father was a photographer. I grew up admiring his strange photographs and smelling darkroom chemicals. He taught me to use a manual camera when I was ten. I’ve been photographing ever since. "
Oriah twists (2011), from We Wish That We All Have a Wonderful Life
DPG: WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE KIND OF PHOTOGRAPHY TO TAKE AND WHY? (EX. PORTRAITS, LANDSCAPES, ETC )
JR: "I take photographs of people. For years I avoided photographing people because of the power relationship involved and my own discomfort with the interaction—I’m pretty shy. However, over the years, I realized that all of my favorite photographs are photographs of people. In a photograph you can stare at some one in the face at length in a way you rarely can in person. Photographs of people captivate me in a way that landscapes never do.
However, because of the power relationship involved and the politics of representation, I choose to only photograph people with whom I am intimate or have a shared sense of vulnerability. I want my images to be honest and vulnerable, and I also want my subjects to feel that they have power over how they’re represented."
Rhae, San Francisco, California (2017), from Queer Babes
DPG: WHAT PROJECT(S) ARE YOU WORKING ON DURING YOUR RESIDENCY AT DICKERMAN PRINTS?
JR: "I’m working on the Queer Babes project. It’s a portrait series that explores the complexity of gender identity and beauty within the queer and trans community today."
Christiaan, Rosemead, California (2016), from Queer Babes
DPG: FOR YOUR QUEER BABES SERIES, DID YOU HAVE A PERSONAL CONNECTION TO THOSE YOU TOOK PHOTOGRAPHS OF? OR WERE THEY STRANGERS? IF YOU KNEW THEM, DID YOU COME UP WITH IDEAS BEFOREHAND OF HOW YOU WANTED TO SHOOT EACH INDIVIDUAL OR PERHAPS YOU COLLABORATED WITH THE MODEL?
JR: "I began the project by photographing my friends and lovers, but since then the project has expanded to include new people I meet and people that I had not met until approaching them about the project. Many people that I did not know before, I now count as my friends. I feel really lucky in that way.
I photograph each person in or around their home when possible. I don’t plan the photograph beforehand, but try out several settings once I arrive for the shoot. There is sometimes a sort of collaboration about outfits and backgrounds, but it really depends on the person. Every shoot is an entirely different experience. Sometimes making photographs is only a small fraction of what we do."
Eric, San Francisco, California (2016), from Queer Babes
DPG: WAS WE WISH THAT WE ALL HAVE A WONDERFUL LIFE SHOT IN A PARTICULAR PLACE? CAN YOU EXPLAIN A LITTLE BIT MORE ABOUT THIS PROJECT?
JR: "We Wish That We All Have a Wonderful Life is a project exploring my family. I photographed my immediate and extended family in different parts of the country, exploring what it was like to photograph while experiencing shared vulnerability with my photographic subjects. I photograph from a place that is embedded within my relationships with my subjects rather than as an outside observer. "
Mom's orange tree (2012), from We Wish That We All Have a Wonderful Life
DPG: LAST BUT NOT LEAST, DO YOU HAVE ANY NEW PROJECTS YOU'D LIKE TO TELL US ABOUT?
JR: "I am working on developing a new project and all that I will say about it is that it’s pornographic, dirty, and fun."