James Welling - Choreograph series, 2014-2020
https://www.jameswelling.net/works/choreograph
James Welling is a postmodern photographer who explores the tension between representation and abstraction. Inspired by the commercial photographer Scott Hyde, Welling began to use a similar superimposing technique, layering multiple images on top of one another in Photoshop to create a collage of sorts. Having studied modern dance at CalArts, he decided to try this layering technique over choreographed dancers, landscapes, and architecture, and this project became his Choreography series, which ran from 2014-2020.
In focusing on dance, landscape, and architecture all in one, Welling weaves a collage of bright, dynamic colors, shapes, and patterns in each of his Choreography images. Each image is highly complicated with sometimes more than 20 layers of images, all individually colored with different hues and utilizing a variety of blending modes. Within Photoshop, he then masks out some parts of each image, which further blends the components together, creating cohesion. He also uses the negatives of some images to give an almost ghostly effect to his figures. While his figures are seen to be in the midst of a dance, their dance is static, which is another component of Welling’s architectural aesthetic. Finally, each digital image is printed, using an inkjet printer, resulting in a large format print.
In my own work, I plan to take Welling’s concept of various layers, individually colored and blended, resulting in unique compositions that also appear like abstract mosaics. My focus is on “Wanderings”, specifically those that occurred abroad during travel. For many people, wandering can seem like a daunting or frightening prospect, however, with positivity and a strategic structure in place, wanderings go from concepts of treacherousness to an extraordinary mosaic of adventures. I began this work in Thesis 1 and plan to continue this series in Thesis 2, so this project is very timely to help me progress towards my collection goals. Each of my works will focus on a different country where I have visited and incorporate multiple layers of images as well as some text taken from my journal entries.
These are three of my favorite images in Welling's Choreography series.
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