James Welling: Flowers
Edited by Denise Bratton. Text by Lynne Tillman
This concise and beautiful exhibition catalogue features arresting, colorful, Rorschach Test-like photograms of flowers by the esteemed Los Angeles-based conceptual photographer, James Welling. For this series, Welling placed the blossoms of a common southern California plant on sheets of 8x10 film and exposed them to light. The negatives were then projected onto special photo paper through a color mural enlarger and color filters, to produce the dramatic, spectral, almost sun- or moon-dappled images reproduced here. Currently a professor of fine art at UCLA, Welling studied at CalArts in the early 1970s. Welling was the subject of a midcareer retrospective at the Wexner Center for the Arts in 2000, which traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
Publisher: David Zwirner
Artists: James Welling
Contributors: Denise Bratton, Lynne Tillman
Designer: Lorraine Wild, Robert Ruehlman, Green Dragon Office, Los Angeles
Printer: Studley Press, Dalton, Massachusetts
Publication Date: 2007
Binding: Hardcover
Dimensions: 8 1/2 x 11 in (21.6 x 27.9 cm)
Pages: 64
Reproductions: 31 color
ISBN: 9780976913689
Retail: $30 US & Canada | £20 | €27
Status: Available
James Welling
James Welling has been questioning the norms of representation since the 1970s. His work centers on an exploration of photography, shuffling the elemental components of the medium to produce a distinctly uncompromising body of work. Welling is also intensely interested in cultural and personal ideas of memory in his work. In opening up the medium of photography for experimentation, James Welling’s practice has influenced an entire generation of artists and photographers.