I call my digital compositions Artegraphs. They are a creative fusion of artistic vision
and photographs. They bring together the old monochromatic world of black-and-white
and the new world of unlimited color. The method I use to accomplish this transformation
comprises what I know, what I believe and what I imagine. K-B-I. The KBI method was
itself transformed into a scientific theory of seeing and knowing. Theory emerged from
an artifact-based practice. Denzin and Lincoln write that 'Artifact-oriented studies can
play an important role in alerting scholars and lay audiences to information and materials
they may otherwise know little about.' While I have used various types of black-and white
photographs in my work, the particular artifact I engage with the most is the real photo
postcard, or RPPC. More specifically I am focused on the genre of postcards called
street scenes. The abundance of material culture, the built environment and social
ideology that street scenes store in visual format is exceptional. They are rich
repositories of cultural information. My art and my research highlights the need
to preserve and explore them.
RPPCs represent the phenomenology of a new domain of knowledge. While the
taking of a photograph is an intentional act, calling into question the motives of the
photographer, Luc Sante reminds us that unlike a bow and arrow aimed at a target,
'a camera by its nature ensures that some kind of target will always be hit, if not
necessarily the intended target nor in the intended way.' A certain level of random-
ness is therefore associated with all photographs. Photographs are like visual archives,
embodying in their chemical substrates what I call Visual Social Memories. When black
and white photos are brought to life in living color the past seems less distant, and more
real. I do this work because I enjoy it. It keeps me sane and grounded, and connected. The
written word is a powerful tool for conveying knowledge, but photographs, because they
are visual, can convey so much more in less time, because vision operates at the
speed of light. In that sense, I hope that my art is enlightening and uplifting.
Sante wrote that photographs offer a view of life somehow unfinished, a type of
Still Life. I enjoy being able to reimagine those moments from fifty, sixty, and
seventy or more years ago as if they were only yesterday:
Vintage - Like You've Never Seen It!
www.ArtistLA.com
Melvin Hale PhD joined Fine Art America on December 24th, 2009.
