"Fact Fiction Fabrication": Photographs by Phil Harris

 

Fact Fiction Fabrication was published by Portland, Oregon's Picturehead Press in June 2000. The book is a twenty year retrospective monograph of my photography.

Fact Fiction Fabrication is divided into three parts, labeled "Facts", "Fictions", and "Fabrications". The sections have traveled, separately and as a body, to a number of venues around the United States. An abbreviated version of the complete exhibition, along with more current work, will be on display at the Archive of the City of Lisbon, Portugal in the fall of 2003.

The oldest pictures are "Fabrications". These are 35mm black and white infrared images, as well as prints made from vintage deteriorated negatives.

The "Facts" section is comprised of 4X5 inch contact platinum prints made over six years. These images are all "discovered" tableaux, ranging from workplaces (such as an active shipyard, an abandoned hydropower station, a hospital's oncology radiation unit, etc.) to strange and wonderful scenes from Prague, Portugal, Santa Fe, and Portland, Oregon.

The "Fictions" work is part of a continuing series, which began ten years ago as conventional still life. Over time, the pictures have evolved to include a form of multiple exposure that engages and reshapes elements of time, space and scale. The majority of the most recent work did not, and in some cases could not, exist as a single arrangement of objects in one place at one time. The images are true photographs, but the nature of camera vision is shown to be at odds with human vision and our agreements about what is real.

All the "Fictions" are made with a 4X5 inch view camera, and come from single negatives. I have evolved a method of making multiple exposures that allows me to place different objects in the frame over time with a great degree of foreknowledge of their locations. Overlapping of imagery is used in a limited, conscious way; pictures are assembled over time, in the same way as paintings, drawings and sculptures. Building the photograph over time enables a spontaneous approach to composition and meaning.

As camera vision has pushed the imagery into non-realistic space and time, it has also become more intuitive and directly emotional. In some sense, the greater the narrative "fiction", the closer the photograph can come to human reality.

For further information about the book, print acquisition, or exhibitions:

Phil Harris
philboy@hevanet.com

 

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For further information about the book, print acquisition, or exhibits
contact Phil Harris philboy@hevanet.com