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M: What is this, Maintenance I?
A: I got two Hasselblad cameras, I designated one as model, and the other one shot it head on. Then the photograph is blown up to full scale. It´s a one to one scale photographic version of a camera like the camera which took the picture.
M: So it´s like the camera is looking at itself, or its twin anyway, as the tape recorder records itself, the wall hands on itself, and so on.
A: Maintenance II is a photograph of my camera reflected in my eye. That is, it´s a photograph of my eye in which the camera that is taking the picture is clearly reflected. Maintenance III, finally is a photograph of my face reflected in my eye. It´s done with a mirror.
M: Your fit right in your pupil.
A: Congress (1968) is the same thing-both Hasselblads shooting each other simultaneously. Which way you going, buddy. Umbrage is one to one scale photograph of the shadow of the camera which is taking the photograph.
M: These Polaroids composite works relate to those, and to the wall, too – the Nine Polaroid Photographs of a Field of Wall and the Nine Polaroid Photographs of a Mirror, both of 1967.
A: In the field of wall piece, as in the wall on the wall, a wall is covered with photographs of itself.
M: But this time there is even more implication of infinite regress because there are more generations of photography. You put the photograph of the wall on the wall then photographed it again. The mirror is even more that way.
A: My feeling was to cover the mirror with pictures of itself and let the chips fall where they may.
M: The mirror piece especially suggests the transparency of the viewer. Because the viewer seems to be looking into a mirror though actually it´s covered by photos of itself, yet there is no reflection of the viewer. The viewer´s not there. Consciousness is so much the topic of it. It´s like Berkeley´s idea esse est percipi, to be is to be perceived, or like the tree falling unheard in the forest. This mirror piece is like that. There´s nobody looking at it. Yet the mirror itself is like a surface of consciousness, a field where images may arise; so there´s the reflective entrapment again, but this time there´s nobody entrapped!
A: Right. Nobody there.
M: It´s also a work of suggestions of infinite regress again. But even more so is this one-Untitled, 1967. It´s a Polaroid photograph of a hand, beside it a Polaroid photograph of the Polaroid photograph of the hand, being held by the hand. All in one to scale, I image.
A: As close as I could get it.
Untitled, 1967, is similar. It´s a composite Polaroids joined with tape. The first photograph which is taped to the wall is of the wall behind it in one to one scale, about two by three inches. Then I take a photograph of the wall beside it, but including the upper left hand corner of the first photograph. Then that´s taped over the part of the wall that it reproduces. Then I just move around building it up.
M: It has that rough taped look that is currently fashionable.
A: It certainly wasn´t fashionable then.
M: These pieces all reverberate with meanings from the wall on the wall: infinite regress, reflection, skepticism about the integrity of selfhood-but in another way they´re very abnormal for you. I mean the two that show your eye. It´s almost shocking to get this figurative element, which is usually lacking from your work.
What was your third show at Dwan´s?
A: That was Continuum, 1970. It was a follow-up of the wall on the wall. Each wall had a silkscreened photomural of the space directly behind the viewer as he or she looks at the photograph. Each wall reflects the one opposite it; since each photograph was mounted before the next one was made, the early ones show a blank wall opposite wall with a photograph of the first wall already on it.
M: It´s a kind of inside out version of the wall on the wall. If you look behind you, you see the same thing that is in front of you. It is as if the viewer were rendered invisible or immaterial or transparent. Of as if the camera were pouncing on the viewer from behind. An infinite regress results somewhat like two mirrors facing each other. You might compare Lucas Samaras´ mirror-lined boxes or mirror-lined rooms, where each wall reflects the one opposite. Except that you have slowed the progress of this energy bouncing back and forth to the pace of photography. Also, the Samaras work of course shows the viewer in all walls, and Continuum makes the viewer disappear.
A: A closely related work is Terminus. I framed two pieces of Masonite, since that´s a material that photos are commonly mounted on, with glass in the front of them, and put them on walls facing one another. The camera is in the middle; the photographers photographs one, the swivells around and photographs the other. Then I blew the photographs up to scale and mounted them so each Masonite now supports the photograph of itself, with the reflection of the camera and, behind it, of the other piece of Masonite on the opposite wall. It´s an extremely dumb piece, yet people never know what the hell they´re looking at.
M: Calling it Terminus is interesting. The reflective energy is kind of bouncing back and forth between the two walls endlessly, as if trapped between them. And Terminus as a title suggests something like the end of the line.
A: We keep trying to make the very last work of art.
M: Hoping.
A: That art would just pack up after this piece.
M: In Terminus as in Continuum the viewer is made more or less transparent. The two surfaces seem to reflect one another as if the viewer didn´t exist, although in Terminus the viewer may notice a ghostly reflection of himself since in this case the photographs are behind glass.
A: In Collapse I did a compression of Terminus out of doors, in a bus stop kiosk in front of Lincoln Center. We took out the advertisements and the milk glass behind them, put a camera on either side of the kiosk, and shot through with both at the same time. Then color transparencies were made one to one scale and put over the milk glass; the fluorescent lights behind the milk glass lit the transparencies, but not clear through. In the day time it looked just like someone had taken the advertisements out, except that if you looked close you could see that the flag in one picture was not waving.
M: So Collapse and Terminus are both extensions of the principle of Continuum, which showed the space behind the viewer.
A: Plastic Coincident is on a similar idea. It's a piece of lucite mounted on a wall. It´s photographs, a blow up is made, and a silkscreen is made from the blowup; then I print the silkscreen image of the lucite, with its various reflections and hints of the wall seen through it, onto the lucite itself. Then I destroy the negative and put the lucite back on the wall where it had been photographed.
M: You remarked that you and Virginia Dwan had argued about the question whether a wall on the wall silkscreen would still be a work of art if it were on another wall. How would you feel about exhibiting this piece elsewhere than on its proper site?
A: I´m willing to do that now. In ´75 I made a variation on Plastic Coincident at the Ambrosiana in Milan. I photographed a Leonardo painting titled The Musician, which was elaborately framed and protected by glass.
M: So the reflection of the camera and the photographer is seen superimposed on the painting?
A: I knew something would be reflected, from my experience with Plastic Coincident, but basically I just wanted to take a picture of that framed painting and hoped that something interesting would happen.
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Published in:
William Anastasi
A Selection of Works from 1960 to 1989
Published by Scott Hanson Gallery, New York 1989
page 23-28