Alicia Hickey: Who, if anyone, inspired you to become a photographer?
David Hicks: I suppose you could trace my roots as a photographer to my father, he abandoned his 35mm film camera and I stole it from him (still have it) and the rest is history.
AH: Was your father interested in photography himself? Or was it just a phase for him?
DH: He shot a lot during his college years and bachelorhood, but by the time I came around it was really just a documenting his life thing, not an artistic release for him.
AH: Can you explain your works so far? What are you trying to communicate to your viewer? Or are you even trying to communicate to a viewer?
DH: My work so far has mainly consisted of pictures of barns, rotting wood, abandoned houses, etc. Honestly its pretty cliché, but I connect with places like that, and making photographs of them allows me to more intimately explore the space (and it gives me an excuse for being there if someone shows up) My photography isn’t so much about a viewer; its more a form of meditation and memory. I go very slowly.
AH: What is it about barns, rotting wood, and abandoned houses that draw you in?
DH: Well, they have a sense of history that most everyone looks past. Every structure had a builder, a purpose. These aren’t some accident, some natural form, I look at an abandoned structure with the same type of awe that we feel when we look upon Angkor Wat or Stone Henge, who built it, why, what stories centered around this thing, and why is it left to decay?
AH: That’s an interesting perspective. Will you, perhaps, in the future take to photographing other subject matters or even different architectural structures?
DH: Who can know what the future holds? For the moment, I’m focusing on one quasi-abandoned house, my family’s farmhouse. I’m trying to imagine the past there, both of the space and the objects that fill it. Hopefully my depiction of the house will convey the feelings it manages to overwhelm me with every time I spend time there.
AH: What photographic process are you exploring within your current work?
DH: Well, I’m doing an odd hybrid of medium format slide film and Ambrotype (wet-plate collodion). Instead of shooting the collodion in camera I am enlarging slides onto the glass plates. I’m toying with the idea of using digital manipulation to create a magical feeling similar to that found in the works of Faulkner and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. But output is going to be collodion in the end.
AH: How did you come to choose this “odd hybrid?” Was it an epiphany, per se, or were you inspired by anyone or anything in particular?
DH: I really wanted to shoot collodion in camera, for the old feel the process lends an image, but I cant afford a large format camera and the portable darkroom. I would need to take collodion outside the lab. So I made up a way.
AH: Do you think that the wet-plate collodion process will enhance and compliment the subject of your work? Or is it just a process you wanted to try?
DH: The house is from a time when the only way you could get a photograph made was to have a wet plate taken. It was a time when photographs were treasured memories, not Facebook ‘like’ bait or something you use to embarrass your kids on their prom night etc. I think that it suits the type of work i’m going to be doing because I am trying to convey memories, both real and imagined in a guttural way. The photograph as an object, not just an image, will more readily accomplish that.
AH: Using wet-plate in the context that you are is very ambitious and well thought-out. Do you think that modern technology has cheapened photography as an art form?
DH: Yeah, It has, but I dont begrudge soccer mom wedding photographers or flicker heads their fun, or their creative outlet, If I were trying to make a living at this I would feel differently Just this weekend I had someone tell me that 40 dollars was too expensive for a 24 x 30 inch print. Nobody would have said such a thing if every photo still had the artist’s hand in the chemicals. But that’s a whole different can of worms.
AH: Do you worry that some people won’t understand why you would use such an “ancient” process rather than a DSLR or something of the more modern nature?
DH: If they dont get it they
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