A collaboration with Wilson Harding Lawrence
Navigating Wall Drawings
Looking at Wilson Lawrence's work, through the camera and with the naked eye, is a lesson in perspective, aesthetics and even physics. Each time that I have struggled to photograph these "wall drawings," my way of creating images has changed. In my independent work, I deal much more centrally with narrative and conceptual themes, yet increasingly, with each picture I explore the elemental tension between the second and third dimensions. Lawrence's work pushes me further into this uncomfortable, vital territory — a sort of battleground where virtual space stretches flatness, or the flat plane compresses space.
Lawrence's work displays geometry that might seem precarious or off-balance, until one perceives that these geometries are in a sophisticated dialog with the surrounding architecture. Capturing this dialog is perhaps the central challenge of photographing the work. I must treat each piece as something between sculpture and architecture. Conveying the scale of a work relative to its surrounding space is every bit as important as conveying its form. Complicating things further is the fact that Lawrence's pieces are often made of the same materials as their physical surroundings. While he does employ conventional fine art materials, most of his work is made of glass, rubber and the very same drywall and wall-paint that comprise the exhibition space.
But this book is not a documentation, strictly speaking. Photographs of Lawrence's work made solely for such a purpose may serve as satisfying previews, or as memory aids to help recall a prior viewing, but ultimately they are a misrepresentation. Lawrence's works are not only objects in space. They create space out of other space. This is why he calls them "wall drawings" – drawings not on but from the wall. It is about what they summon, pull, reveal.
This book is about a process of looking. I've sought to picture these wall drawings as spaces that one enters. I've also tried to capture time, because like a performance, Lawrence's works take time. How do I convey that in an instant? This challenge has drawn me to photograph details so that they bleed out of frame. A crucial part of viewing these works in the flesh is the moving between vantage points, and cropping into a specific region reminds one that the picture represents a specific view in time. Implicit is the extension of the material beyond the moment and the space contained in the photograph. Capturing the mutable and elusive essence of Lawrence's work is testament to their beauty and their strangeness, to the ways in which they work upon us as physical beings possessing both memory and imagination.
Gregory Vershbow