I have become quite a fan of rephotography and discovering Klett, Wolfe collaborative works through a lecture given at Falmouth’s face to face event. I have already spoken about the work ‘Yosemite in Time’ where the pair experimented with constructing from the original source photographs into a wider view, collaborating through time and perception. Within these methods of rephotography, it gave these well-known American landscapes a visual conversation within the changing landscape. Although in my work I am struggling to find an archive that I can work with, I will still want to take a look at this work as this is a good example of a quality publication to convey their concepts and outcomes.
‘Reconstructing the View’ continues to be based around the relationship between historic source imagery and new pieces, this time the Grand Canon was the subject of choice. It says in the introduction “Some aspects of this project are new to Klett and Wolfe’s rephotography: for the first time, they have engaged nonphotographic source imagery, vernacular and commercially made images, and stereoscopic rephotography” (Senf, 2012) This I find very interesting as artists they are constantly evolving concepts in order to inform their body of work and practice, very inspiring and creative approach.
This book takes forever to get through and I don’t mean that in a bad way, excitement in every page, something different, displayed either visually or in captions on how they achieved the image. I especially love the work of the altered postcards, where just a snippet of photograph is overlaid. Another postcard method comprises of a tourist postcard posing on top of ‘Bright Angel Point’ and then shows an additional 6 photographs from different times and photographers unknown.
Reconstructing the View by Klett and Wolfe
The combination piece of lithograph by William Henry and the military spotting scope used by Klett and Wolfe, confirms geographical points across the horizon. Within this bubble of imagery you get this quite surreal viewpoint across the horizon. The majority of the images feature a ‘back image’ taken by Klett, Wolfe and then the insert is the historic image. Which to me works better then the just side by side ‘then and ‘now’ imagery, it gives the photographer creative licence to construct this image and present time periods he/she wants.
Reconstructing the View by Klett and Wolfe
The physicality’s of the book are beautiful and it really showcases how condensed this body of work is. Wolfe and Klett have pushed the boundaries of what rephotography can be, especially incorporating different source types such as postcards and sketches. As I am struggling with finding historic imagery perhaps I could play around with some of the site maps and incorporate that some how but I think the greatest message I got from this is just have fun with constructing an image.
Klett, M., Wolfe, B., Senf, R. and Pyne, S. (2012). Reconstructing the view. Phoenix Art Museum.
Critical Research Journal 