The Figital Revolution

This was the pivotal project that in 2003/2004 radically changed my approach in photography from a straight process to a hybrid art process. After 15 years of working in both large and medium format in the pursuit of the “perfect print” I snapped and realized that there had to be more…

In addition to shows both here in the USA there was also a show in 2004 in Paris, France at ESpace Bergger. Works from this collection are in numerious private collections as well as the Polaroid Collections.

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For now we see through a glass darkly;

but then face to face: now I know in part;

but then shall I know even as also I am known.

First Corinthians 13:12

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY

The original Biblical context of the phrase, “through a glass darkly,” uses a shadowy mirror as a metaphor for a faulty or imperfect understanding. Yet, the poetic beauty of the phrasing and metaphor also works against this commonly accepted meaning, toward an almost antithetical notion: that of taking joy in imperfection.

In an exciting and lyrical new collection of work, Through A Glass Darkly by Stephen M. Schaub employs a hybrid process of his own devising- “Digital Holgaroids,” as Schaub refers to them- to reach a place of unique expressive potential which finds joy in the imperfection of photographic description.

After shooting a Polaroid positive with his Holga camera, Schaub scans the Polaroid print. From this “sketch,” Schaub then employs select digital processes to achieve the visualized photograph. Final prints are rendered in exquisite depth and tonality as carbon black pigment piezograph prints on European mould-made papers.

“The photographs choose an emotional over a literal translation of a scene,” explains Schaub. “The non-digital information becomes the springboard for the digital, and between the two an interpretation of a scene emerges which may in fact be only distantly related to the original scene.”

What emerges is a less rational universe than our own, a collection of non-places and non-things which feels all the more familiar for its anonymity and highly symbolic nature. The overall effect is not unlike what Wordsworth once described as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion…(of) emotion recollected in tranquility.”

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