The ParkeHarrisons use of color is restrained and rarely
saturated. New to their process is the use of color and
transparency film, scanning, limited Photoshop, and Epson
printing. What the color film captures is enhanced or modulated
through hand painting with Golden acrylics on the photographic
surface in careful layers so that a rich depth is achieved,
as in the blue background of The Alchemist. The wall’s patina is
built from the rust, age, and frenetic motion of the worker’s
Laocoönian struggle (a set the artists built). Yet the blue wall, as
created and recorded on film, is worked further and deeper
through applied paint.
Like oil on canvas, the surfaces of these photographs have to
be seen. Reproductions lack the texture and defused depths
achieved by the building up of layers. Along with late 19th-century
albumen printers and photogravurists, who used early color by
way of the Autochrome (a painterly color process circa 1907),
the ParkeHarrisons have named among their influences the PreRaphaelites,
Vilhelm Hammershoi (a little-known master), Ernst
Ludwig Kirchner, and Mark Rothko, all painters. In a photographic
age enthralled with color, the ParkeHarrison’s painterly approach
is refreshing (for this viewer) in its refusal of too much use of
Photoshop color, which can be garish, exaggerated, and distracting
from an artist’s otherwise thoughtful composition.
To further elucidate their working methods and intentions,
the interview on the following pages was conducted between
the ParkeHarrisons and the author.