Jessica Falco is a BFA Senior whose studies are far from over. Even though she is currently enrolled in Thesis and Exhibition, she plans on staying at Mason Gross for another year. This is because she determined to complete a double concentration in both photography and graphic design. She turned to photography after her original attempts in the graphic design courses proved to be frustrating. In photo, she found a medium that allowed her to more easily express her creative impulses. However, it has not replaced her love for graphic design, an area of art she hopes to make a career out of.
Erin Donnelly- You said that you started out as a graphic design major. When and what made you change your mind to photography?
Jessica Falco- I still love graphic design very much, to the point that I am going to be a fifth year so that I can- I am currently a senior now, in my fourth year. I am going to stay an extra year so I can finish up the remainder of the graphic design classes so that I can do a double concentration of graphic design and photography. Because I do love graphic design very much and I want to get back into it. But the reason why I switched is because I wasn't at all proficient in the computer programs- photo shop, illustrator- in design, to the point where I couldn't even finish my school assignments. So, it was either get really awful grades, for not being able to show my ideas, or just kind of go into another concentration and see if I do like that better. And I do like photography a lot, but I do like graphic design more.
ED-Do you feel like right now photography is better suited to express your creative ideas and artistic goals?
JF- I feel they are very different in terms of expressing my own personal ideas. Graphic design to me is much more commercial. I would be working with other people, working with clients and working with their ideas. Graphic Design isn't where you express yourself really, you're working with clients and stuff like that. Yes, I feel I can express myself much more with photography in an art sense because photography can be very commercial or more art driven when it comes to careers. But I just always had the desire for design. I do like photography a lot as well, thats why I am going to finish it. I just see myself career wise going through with graphic design.
ED- In working with clients and things like that, could it be something about that challenge of working within someone else's parameters is what you enjoy about Design? Because it sounds as though it is not so much the process that interests you. Or is it a little bit of both?
JF- Like the process of making the work?
ED- Right. Like the process of working with photoshop and other programs.
JF- I think that the process I would enjoy a lot. Having an idea in my head and being able to get the idea on the computer screen- I would like that very much. Its just that right now, I don't have a lot of knowledge in photoshop. It has been kinda difficult for me to be able to get my ideas across on the computer screen. So the whole process of getting my ides out is what I like. I think even more so than having a client with other ideas, and I have o make work that then suits their ideas. The artistic part is kind of gone but I see myself as a very meticulous person and I feel that design suits me in that way.
ED- You described to me before that you find something beautiful, in an otherwise ugly landscape, when you crop and frame the image. In these very frontal photographs here of the building facades, the found imagery and how you cropped it starts to present itself or kind of exist as a painting. Can you see that happening in these works too? Do you see any of that language crossing over into your work from other disciplines?
JF- It's something I have really thought about, but now that you mention it I can. I think it is mostly because there is no vantage point in these photographs. It just stops pretty abruptly. I am taking pictures of walls. So it kind of lends itself to the flatness of painting. Paintings clearly have depth to them but they are ultimately- even how they are presented- have a flat quality to them. And thats just a photographers perspective on them, so maybe its wrong. But I sort of can see that. I did think a lot about the colors and did some work on them in photoshop. I do see a painterly quality in them- in the colors and the distortions of photoshop makes it look even a little unreal.
ED- I think it looks hyper-realistic. No so much unrealistic. You can see how they do exist in this pictorial painting space. I think its because its less about looking into, I guess, a more traditional photographic space, where the space is more perspectival. I even see that following through in the new line of work that you said that you were working on with the fruit. What can you say about these- because it seems so different and deviated, they are these photographs impressed on this ambiguous space. Do you see them as continuation of a train of thought about the compressed space?
JF- No, it really has nothing to do with my previous work. I wanted to take a completely different turn. At this point in my life- or at this point in my artwork, I guess I should say, i wanted to focus on natural objects. I thought that fruit was the perfect thing for me to focus on. And at the time, in my photography class, we were working with alternative photographic processes. So we were taking pictures without the use of a camera, we were scanning images, we were in the darkroom. So these are photograms. I really enjoyed being in the darkroom after not being in it for a while. I wanted to take advantage of being able to actually use pieces of fruit.
ED- What is a photogram, exactly?
JF- So I sliced a piece of fruit, laid it on a piece of paper, had the light shine through the photosensitive paper and it was an exact imprint of the fruit. I am not using a camera to photograph the fruit, its not pixels, they are not made up on a computer. So its a much more personal and intimate way to capture the fruit. It definitely complimented what I was going for. I wanted a very natural feel, I wanted to focus on natural objects and I wanted the process to be natural as well. So I cut up the fruit in very thin slices, so what you are seeing is the actual imprint of the fruit. Nothing is digitalized, there is no work done on photoshop, you are left with what that actually was.
ED- Its very interesting that you said that it came out of nowhere, because it really does speak to the other series. In the pattern, in the very frontal shallow space. But I find the processes being very different is more difficult to notice. Probably because I am such a novice to photography. So what is it about the different photographic processes that draws you to the different ways to work?
JF- I think its just the fact that we were introduced to it in my photography class. We had an assignment where we weren't allowed to use the camera to creat images. We had to use other sources. I could use the scanner to create images but I was more intrigued by the idea of photograms. I think I said this before, but wanting to focus on more natural forms of photography and more natural objects like fruit. I really think tha it helped to convey this idea much more. Where as digital photography would have just been the worst thing for me to use in this project There's just nothing intimate about a digital camera for this particular assignment. I did ten 16"x 20" photograms. I used 10 different fruits. And they are the exact reproduction of the fruits. For me, I couldn't have gotten any more personal with the assignment. it just was the correct photographic process to use. It's what complemented the work the best.
ED- You are using the word personal a lot. And I feel like, once I heard you say that, I could see that there is something very intimate about these. Like the self portrait and then, I guess, the portrait of your friend. Can you talk about your personal point of view or this idea of intimacy being filtered through a digital camera rr the photographic lense?
JF- Even if you are taking a picture of some kind of landmark, it clearly isn't a personal object to the photographer. What makes it personal is how you chose to frame a photograph- that landmark. It the same in an of these pictures of the doors. There all these kind of hideous ugly doors that I found while walking around. I was so attracted to ugly things. I wanted to make an entire series of these doors. I have never seen door like these before. They are doors that are either just locked up or never walked out of, that people don't care to stop and look at when they pass by them. They caught my attention so much that I wanted to focus on them for an assignment . I don't think that focusing on something ugly was in anyway a detriment. In how I framed them, in how I chose to photograph them, again, made it personal to me. Something I can call my own.
ED- So you said that you were just walking around with a camera. Did these doors just present themselves to you or were they something you were particularly searching out? How do you feel that you come across what would be an interesting thing to photograph, as worthy series or a worthy subject?
JF- Thats not something I can talk too much about. But I definitely came across these doors- maybe one or two of them- walking or driving around. After seeing these two doors, I knew I would make it a quest to find more doors because they had intrigued me so much that I knew I wanted to make a series about them. In reality, they are just doors with graffiti on them. They are not anything particularly special to anyone other than maybe myself.
ED- So what is it about these personal pictures do you find you want to share with the public or your audience?
JF- I mean, these are things that I have never seen displayed. Pictures of my town generally represent the New York skyline, thats what Hoboken is known for. Being able to have beauty near the city, thats generally what people think of Hoboken. People forget that we have projects there. They forget that we have our bad sections. I don't want to see it as a detriment to my town, I wanted to maybe even glorify that we have these kind of rundown doors. But thats ok, because thats what makes our town our town. We don't have to shun these places, we can embrace them. I thought it was ok to focus on these doors.
ED- So, are you trying to find through these photographs of these building facades and doors a truer, more realistic reflection of your town? And you also said that you feel like they are very personal. So, do you think your photos can exist as both a personal statement and, I guess, serve a higher purpose?
JF- Like, as in reflection of my town? Yea. It is personal to me and why I photograph these things is becauseit is something I have never seen these things personally. I have never seen people photograph these things- I haven' seen them in publications, in a newspaper, or magazines, or websites. they don't display pictures of these sorts of Hoboken. Again, its personal because- that door does not belong to me- butI chose to walk up to it, I took the time to figure out how to frame it. I took time with that door and take its picture. thats what would make this series personal to me.
ED- Thats really interesting, because before, I did kind of get stuck on the idea of photography as some kind of cold, reflective, impersonal representation of this found image. Its removed through this lense. Hearing you talk about your relationship to your images- what draws you to it, how to crop it, and even the subject. It is interesting to see how you marry what seems to be these two diametrically opposed ideas. Could you talk more about finding beauty in something you call ugly. looking at it, I deffinitley dont see ugly. Perhaps its because you find the beauty within it in the act of photographing the subject or that the ugly in nature can be beauty as well...
JF- I don't know if you don't see it as ugly because of the way it is photographed verses seeing these doors in person. I am making them appear pretty than they are because they are framed nicely. They're all a cohesive set. They almost don't look like graffitied doors really. I feel as if you were to see them walking down the street, you would maybe see them differently than how you see them displayed here: where they are all next to each other and framed nicely. The presentation of them and having them all together maybe makes you see them differently than if you were to see them walking down the street. Everyones interpretation of what they see is different, thought.
ED- Perhaps is the removing of the immediate impact of the smells, and the immediate surroundings. I mean, if you had approached that door and next to it were a big nasty dumpster, stinking of garbage, you would have a totally different experience with this scene.
JF- Yea, you are eliminating four other senses. So you can feel the paint chips on the door. You can't smell the potential dumpster thats right by the door. We are excluding these other factors when we are working with these pictures. Its a much different experience than walking or being there in person.
ED- Right, thats pretty great! Whereas some artists try so hard to recreate and realize this total sensory experience we have with an image in the flesh- kind of insisting that just looking at an image is not enough to really describe it. Here, it looks like you are capitalizing off that. In a way, you are using it to your advantage.
ED- Do you feel like you want to do more with portraiture?
JF- I have always had some anxiety with photography. In that, approaching pople and asking them to take their picture has been very difficult for me to do. And I think its difficult on the other side. The people that I ask to take their picture, they seem to be reserved and don't like the idea of having a camera shoved in their face. I don't like the idea of shoving a camera in someone's face who is not comfortable with it. I myself am not comfortable with having my picture taken. There is this wierd back and forth that happens. I am trying to get over that anxiety. Outside of approaching friends, I definitely want to photograph more people.
ED- What do you think it is about photography that is so intimidating and so daunting to potential subjects?
JF- It depends on the person, I guess. If I am appraching a stranger, who is to say I am not going to take that picture and then post it on the web. There is this whole privacy issue that people have. It scares people. After taking someone's picture, I have this image of them that I can then keep forver. That scares people. People may think they look unattractive. Once you can get over that, or once you can accept trust, then thats when the fear is eliminated. Its a tough issue.
ED- You're right. But theres so much portraiture out there. Do you think there is some trick to it? Does the power lie with the photographer to make the subject comfortable or is it you need to find a subject who is comfortable in front of the camera? It could be a numbers game too, right? The more you take, the more you can find that one...
JF- It could be all of those things. It can be a multitude of them. I believe there are more photogenic people. But there is also a level of responsibility of the photographer. They have to make sure the subject is comfortable- like speaking with them, showing them the pictures, spending time with them. There was a guest artist who came to speak with my photography class last year. I remember her telling me that a lot of her subjects were very timid. She showed us the photographs and they all looked great. She said that she had to stay with her subjects for about three hours; this allowed the subject to feel the most comfortable. By that time you almost forget there is a camera capturing your image.
ED- That is a pretty big variable, the human element, that you have to work with in portraiture, huh? Do you feel that working with these variables, like a personality, or with say what the streets present to you- the doors, the building facades, is something you want to persue? Or are you interested in starting to construct an image?
JF- I think I spent a lot of time photographing things that are already there and existing, exploring towns, very external old, ugly things. I want to move on to the construction of an image. Making it to be what I want exactly, not what's already there. Working with staging and setting thing up, working with still lives, incorporating people into that. I'd love to do more staging. Working on creating what I want. It would be interesting to go in that direction because I really haven't done it.
