- Artist or Maker
- Sheila Pinkel
United States, Virginia, Newport News, born 1941, active Los Angeles - Title
- Untitled
- Date Made
- circa 1977-1982
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions
- Image: 16 × 20 1/8 in. (40.64 × 51.12 cm)
Primary support: 16 × 20 1/8 in. (40.64 × 51.12 cm)
Secondary support: 16 × 20 1/8 in. (40.64 × 51.12 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2011.149.26
- Collecting Area
- Photography
- Curatorial Notes
In 1973, as a graduate student at UCLA, Sheila Pinkel became fascinated by the possibilities of cameraless photography. She began physically sculpting—shaping, folding—photo paper in the darkroom and then exposing the newly dimensional form to a light source. Similar in spirit to the photogram process, Pinkel’s approach differed in that nothing was placed on the photo paper during exposure. Uniquely, she worked outside the Art Department, studying with UCLA physicists to further her understanding of light phenomena, utilizing the full spectrum of sources: visible, ultraviolet, X-ray, computer-generated, and Xerox. Her manipulated photo papers were then developed in photochemical baths, during which the paper naturally flattens out. The resulting artwork is an uncanny two-dimensional representation of itself as a three-dimensional object. In Pinkel’s words, “the works became time-space paradoxes and I came to know them as Light Works [versus photographs].” Over time, the series became less structural, less about formal qualities, and more evocative of a landscape in abstract form.
Eve Schillo
2024
- Copyright
- © Sheila Pinkel
