Output details

Shoshone Falls

Is it possible to establish a visual dialogue between a master maker’s last works and a contemporary artist’s interpretative response to them in terms of site, time and place that goes beyond the obvious apparent subject matter? Is it possible to establish a dialogue between an artist’s last work and pursue problems proposed in that work to a contemporary level of currency? What part do pictorial devices, art-historical issues and social significance play in establishing this dialogue? A detailed examination of the O’Sullivan’s pictures of Shoshone Falls and an in-depth survey of the current geographical condition of the waterfalls over a period of weeks took place, before making a series of thematically grouped singular pictures. These pictures respond to the historical views of O’Sullivan and to the current and vastly changed physical circumstances of the entire area now surrounding Shoshone Falls and the Snake River Basin. A long collaboration with art historian of the American West, Toby Jurovics, an in-depth interrogation to the work of Sullivan culminated with this project and my critical response. This practice-based project responds to the last works of the pioneering 19th century artist Timothy H. O’Sullivan. He visited the great western American landmark, Shoshone Falls (known as ‘the Niagara of the West’) and made a group of pictures that were his last in 1874. He pioneered a photographic approach to outdoor picture-making, that is peerless to this day. This project set out to challenge O’Sullivan’s process, not only by reviewing it, but pursuing this review with the purpose of developing and extending it in an original and contemporary photographic way. The project is a conversation between artists of different generations and the problems of making conclusive artworks at definitive moments in their individual working lives.