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A Rose and MiltonFrom the generations of rosesThat are lost in the depths of timeI want one saved from oblivion,One spotless rose, of all thingsThat ever were. Fate permits meThe gift of choosing for onceThat silent flower, the last roseThat Milton held before him,Unseen. O vermilion, or yellowOr white rose of a ruined garden,Your past still magically remainsForever shines in these verses,Gold, blood, ivory or shadowAs if in his hands, invisible rose.- Jorge Luis Borges

A photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace,something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask.- Susan Sontag

Don Freeman is an American photographer, best known for his large, monochrome printsthat depict subject matter, be it landscape, human forms or architectural fragments, instates of transmogrification. He divides his time between New York City and a small cabinin the Catskill Mountains that he shares with his partner Garo Sparo and his two Whippets,Storm and Ginger.When I first met Don Freeman, in 1984, he was living in New York City’s infamous artisthousing project. Westbeth – a former Bell Laboratories building that was turned intosubsidized artist housing in the late 60’s. A rather grungy place, which seemed to bepermanently plagued by New York’s ubiquitous cockroaches, it was once home to thephotographer of the subversive, Diane Arbus, who lived and died there, slashing her wristsin her bathtub in 1971. Don was supporting himself as a graphic designer at the time, whilefuriously painting in the evenings.At the time his subject matter was deeply rooted in religious iconography, the Madonna andChild to be specific. Raised as a Lutheran, Don’s concept was to transform the CatholicRenaissance work of Giovanni Bellini into an Eastern Orthodox icon via silk screens andhand applied gold leaf. Fueled with coffee and beer, the Penguin Café Orchestra and ThisMortal Coil playing on the stereo, Don spent weeks applying and burnishing gold-leaf halos

Don Freeman

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to the 50 silk-screened Madonnas that would ultimately cover an entire wall at the StokkerStikker gallery in New York’s East Village.For the next years, Don mined religious iconography and images of classical antiquity toproduce his hybrids of painting and photography. It was during this time that Dondiscovered photographic print toning and abandoned painting completely and startedworking with only his camera and his toning chemicals, creating work that explored tonality,depicted blurred and often fragmented images.The toners that Don chose to work with were single color, dye based, manufactured byEdwal. Dye toning kits were the domain of the amateur photographer who wanted to evoke amood and nostalgia. In Don’s hands, these kitsch materials were transformed into a highlynuanced color system. The resulting image is no longer a traditional black and whitephotograph as the toning bath creates a chemical reaction that transforms the metallic silverin the paper to a dye.Over the years Don pushed the envelope on what a photograph could be, he next moved onto using architectural blue printing to create a series of highly nuanced prints of flowersand Greek and Roman antiquities. As the blueprint process is highly unstable, somethingthat Don was aware of, the images would degrade when exposed to light, creating ghosts ofthe original images. I remember visiting him once at a house he was renting in SagHarbour, NY and seeing a wall of pale markings and realizing that earlier that year theywere deep blue images of peonies.One has to remember at this point in time, the mid – late 80’s AIDS was ravaging NewYork’s creative community. A day didn’t go by when you didn’t hear of another friendtesting positive for HIV. Like so many others, Don watched many of his friends transforminto shadows of their original selves. It’s in this context that Don’s work, which was basedaround spirituality and transformation, must be considered.Don’s work is shot on 35mm black and white negative film. He uses high-speed, Tri-X, filmfor its inherent graininess.Don has created a catalog of images over the years; photos of flowers, antiquities, letters andarchitectural details that function as his noumenons awaiting their transformation by Doninto subjective, tangible images. Don refers to his collection of images as, “a sort of Noah’sArk.”Being very influenced by cinema, specifically the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, and morespecifically Tarkovsky’s film Mirror, in which Tarkovsky creates a visual narrative thatcombines past and present, dreams and reality, color and black-and-white; themes at thecore of Don’s interests. Don is very emphatic that his images appear in a specific,programmed sequence, creating a visual narrative that functions to create an emotional,sub-verbal impression as one passes from one still image to the next. He’s also worked infilm himself. His first film, entitled, Tires, Velvet, Paws, is a super 8, black and white film,loosely based on Andre Breton’s novel Nadja. It was shot at night in Paris, along the Seine.I recently spoke with Don over coffee about the images that were chosen to appear in thisprofile. Don, who often speaks in strings of non-sequiturs, shared these thoughts:

Compiled byKevin Guyer

www.donfreemanphoto.com

Represented byJayne H Baum , New York - USAwww.jhbgallery.com

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The Clouds: “I was riding the ferryfrom Greece to Turkey and I shot theseclouds, they’re the most beautiful cloudsI’ve ever seen. I never had to shootanother cloud since. Clouds have a wayof pausing you, to me they’re god.”

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The Curtains: “They’re froma confessional in a church inArezzo. I was taken in by theminute, human detail; youcan actually see that they werestitched by hand. I think theyexpress ideas that are deeperthan words.”

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Shadow on Wall: “The sha-dow on the wall creates aface. I don’t walk aroundlooking for faces on wallsand in shadows, it was justthere.”

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The Branches: “My branch series is an ongoing project. I like the idea ofcoming face to face with something beautiful without anything coming betwe-en the image and me. I often carry around a white card with me when I go onwalks through the woods and use it as a background to isolate the branches Ifind, like a portable studio. I’m not going after a Blossfeldt type approach,they’re very graphic and probably reflect my formal training as a graphic desi-gner. When I exhibit them they’re presented like a checkerboard, one black,one white, after the other, across the wall.”

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Blue Statue: “There’s a museum in Nymphenburg,Germany that I was visiting with jeweler Ted Muehling, I sawthis tiny Etruscan bronze figure in a glass case. I was attrac-ted to its gesture; in focus it wasn’t so interesting to me, bygoing out of focus I tried to bring it to life. The framinggave her a room to exist in, her own architecture. I wantpeople to know it’s a statue, but one that I’ve given a new lifeto, like Pygmalion did.”

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The Dead Bird: “I was on my way home one winte-r’s night and found it in the street; there was a footof snow on the ground. I brought it up to my roof,spread its wings and left it there. I forgot about itfor a week and then went up and photographed it.I call it Dead Bird/Live Bird – depending on whichway you hang it, it could be seen as dead or readyto fly away.”

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Candelabra: “I shot this at theMusee Carnavalet in Paris. It’s aFrench baroque candelabra. It’svisually connected to my branchseries. I lived in Paris for 3 years inthe early eighties and the Carnavaletwas one of my favorite places.

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The Words: “I started collecting calligraphy and old letters at fleamarkets. I call them my Poison Letter series; they’re about womenwho poison their lovers to get away from them – the idea of beingpoisoned by love. I create these in the darkroom by putting two dif-ferent negatives together, one of a letter and one of somethingabstract. They’re very spontaneous and random. I don’t organizemy negatives – I throw them into a box. It forces me to revisit themwith a fresh eye. They can all be new possibilities that way.”

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Portrait: “When I shoot portraits I often like to make people looklike statues. None of my work is photo shopped. I shot my friendKatherine under a tree and the sunlight filtering through the leavescreated this dappled effect and made her take on the appearance of aweathered statue – the idea of turning someone into marble. It’sbased on my favorite myth, Pygmalion, only in reverse. My lightingexperiments don’t always work – I often need to see the contact sheetto see if a succeeded, but this one certainly did.”