Lauren Henkin’s photographic work explores our relationship to nature in this an era in which that relationship is perpetually mediated by technology and mass production. For example, in her new “Botanical” series, she photographed silk flowers up close. Printed at a scale relative to the human body and cropped to abstract the figure, the fake flowers are imbued with a human quality. From a distance, they look like garden variety home décor; up close, it’s easy to see just how cheap they are.
In her “eScapes” series, Henkin re-photographs stock images of picturesque landscapes — canyons, mountaintops, even the moon — on her computer monitor. One the surface, they seem like generic photos themselves; the only clue that they’re not are the distorted color lines streaking down the screen, and occasionally a mouse cursor cheekily left in.
I met Henkin at her new home and studio in Rockland, Maine. The home, full of windows and set on several acres of forest land, was designed by Henkin herself — she studied architecture, an experience that clearly influences her art. Construction workers were still on site while we talked about her new show, “Second Nature,” at the newly-reopened Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA) in Rockland, five minutes from her house.
“Second Nature” is one of the first shows at the newly-redesigned CMCA. It’s also just a couple minutes from your studio. What does the institution mean to you?
I have moved about 10 times in the last eight years. I decided last year that I would need to stop moving, especially if I wanted to return to sculpture. My partner and I were spending more and more time working in Maine, and realized that we make our best work there. When CMCA committed to the new building designed by Toshiko Mori, we decided to commit to Maine and build a small house and studio. Being able to live on a hill on 5 acres with a great studio and have a first-class museum so close is a real gift.
Your background is in architecture. Can you tell me a little bit about how that informs your current photographic practice?
I studied architecture in a program that emphasized the importance of form, space, and conceptual ideas rather than functional space. The education taught me how to develop a strong idea or statement and figure out how best to make that commentary — with material selection, scale, perception, and perspective — while also pushing the importance of the making of the project which often included photography, drawing, and sculpture. All of these considerations are always present in my work.
Your new series of photos of silk flowers seem to be playing on the genre of macro-flower photography, but in a surprisingly subtle way. It’s not until you’re up close to the large-scale prints themselves that you really appreciate how fake the flowers actually are. Why was it important for you to make these images so sleek and seductive, instead of, say, exaggerating their plasticity to a more dramatic effect?
It was important to have the viewer want to get close to them, to make the discovery, as you did, that they’re made of plastic, wire, and silk. One way to encourage a more intimate engagement was to make extremely seductive prints that presented the flowers at the scale of the human body. What makes photography unique is that the viewer expects to see some semblance of truth. By making these photographs almost hyper-real, there is an initial element of truth to them that’s playfully deceitful in the context of what the viewer eventually discovers. This exchange is amplified through their reference to one of the most cliché and overused genres of the medium — macro flower photography. Can plastic flowers be as beautiful as real ones? I think there’s a question there to answer, especially when broadened to include how our relationship to nature has changed.
Similarly, in your “eScape” photographs, wherein you photograph stock internet images of famous natural settings on your computer monitor, it’s hard to tell that they’re not standard landscape photos themselves. It’s only up close that the viewer sees the cursor and the pixelization of your computer screen. Other artists would turn that gesture into a conversation of appropriation or the mass proliferation of images. But for you, it seems to be a more personal discussion. What was your thinking behind those photographs?
The “eScape” photographs resulted from pondering this quote from Susan Sontag’s “On Photography,”: “Photographs have increased our access to knowledge and experiences of history and faraway places, but the images may replace direct experience and limit reality.” I thought about how images circulate online and the images that we use as “wallpaper” for computer screens. I thought about how, if I see multiple images of the Grand Canyon online, those images are “good enough” replicas of the place to make me feel like I’ve seen it already. I thought about how so many views of nature now are mediated, be it through a computer monitor, a window frame, or a camera’s ground glass. I searched Wikipedia Commons for generic landscape terms like “clouds,” “river,” or “mountain” and by photographing them in great detail with a large-format camera, I am able to show that what we’re really looking at are reproductions perfectly dissected by a strict geometry and color palette. This whole project builds to ask cultural — but also very personal —questions like, Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?
The majority of your work is done with a large-format camera. Why is it important for you to use that tool?
Two reasons: the process and the precision. Regarding the process, while it can be a challenge to hike with the large camera, film holders, and a tripod, the slowness of setting up the camera makes me more deliberate in the making of an image. I also like to look at the image upside down on the ground glass; it immediately abstracts the image, enabling me to focus on form. Regarding precision, visually subtle physical interventions are central to the concept behind each of my pieces — such as the visual subtlety of the flowers’ artificiality in the “Botanicals” series, or the faint moiré patterns obscuring our natural view of the computer monitor in the “eScapes” series. The larger the negative, the more precise I can get, enabling more flexibility in final decisions about materials and scale.
Several images are shot from windows in your parent’s house. At least one other work depicts one of their trinkets. Was it important for you to include a family presence in your work?
“Second Nature,” like all of my other projects, began from the observations I made about the spaces and objects that occupy my daily life. The last few bodies of work I have made — especially my “Park” series — have focused on the tension between preservation and extinction, replication and the singular. While “The Park” addressed these tensions within the context of a large urban park, “Second Nature” brought that discussion indoors. By including the land and objects in my family’s home, I’m commenting on my own behavior first and then hoping that conversation extends to a broader cultural statements.
Let’s talk about “The Living Wall.” You’ve never shown sculpture before. What was the impetus behind including it in this exhibition?
Having studied architecture, my native language is sculpture. There is a long wall in one of the galleries that felt perfect for a large sculpture/assemblage. It also gave me an opportunity to connect other components in the show: “Birdwatching,” a photograph of a metal bird framed in lacquered green which is then hung on black wallpaper patterned with flowering vines; and the “Botanical” photographs of plastic and silk flowers. With the “Living Wall,” a 16 by 4 foot assemblage of fake greenery, I conclude this triad of works with a piece that is extremely textural, stimulating the sense of touch. It is shown in a darkened gallery with two video works and is subtly lit, making the piece moodier, painterly, and very natural looking. The three works create a complex web of questions: What is real? What is manufactured?
What is authentic?
[Source:-blouin Artinfo]
