Marina Black
Marina Black originally studied history and painting; while her passion for history hasn't waned, it has added new dimensions to Black’s photography, which has become her main focus. Her process of working has always been about experimentation, using historical photographic methods and the physical process of reworking the surface. Embracing contingency and appreciating the unpredictable are of great value in her working process. By allowing the unpredictable to happen, she allows herself to transcend the conventional process of creating an image that enables her to embrace the unexpected. She works in analogue, digital and camera-less technologies and likes the tactile qualities of prints. On a quest for beauty, her images are marked by a softness of the outlines and a longing that she identifies with pointillism. "The 'Postcards from Italy’ series combines elaborate, hand-painted in post-production black & white images that generate the distinct mood for each image, inadvertently producing images that appear simultaneously rich and muted.
Black's images reside in the world of ambiguity. An undercurrent feeling of mystery permeates the archetypal people, places, and settings of the fictitious universe. Although Marina uses historical and artistic references in her work, her creations are not constrained by the limitations of historical replication. Instead, she combines fiction with reality, the past and the present. Her visual style is not merely a nostalgic diary, but a look at the present through "a rearview mirror" in order to see what’s coming.
Black received the W. Lawrence Heisey Graduate Award for outstanding achievement in creative & scholarly work, as well as a number of Ontario Arts Council grants. She was a featured exhibitor at the FOTOFEST international photography festival in Houston, US, and the CONTACT International Photography Festival in Toronto, Canada. Her work has been published in The Best Of LensCulture Vol. 3; Eyemazing Susan Vol. II; FOSSILS OF LIGHT + TIME; and BURN. Black’s work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions worldwide and is included in the public collections of the Heritage Municipal Museum of Malaga, Spain; the Alliance Francaise in Canada; and the IZOLYATSIA non-governmental arts foundation, Ukraine.
'The POSTCARDS FROM ITALY' is a series of letters written by two lovers separated by time and space. The man is fighting a distant war; the woman writes from her home in Rome. They talk about love and hopes for the future, the ancient Roman city, share thoughts on history. Disappointed by his military career, the soldier wants to leave to go in search of the legendary City of the Immortals. He finds it, and (inevitably) receives more than he bargained for. In one of the last letters, he quotes Hamlet — "The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right! " and she is referring to scientific discoveries about the unpredictability of time.
But then he disappears - wounded, or dead? - all we know is that his life is recounted via her letters that she kept writing to him. It is not exactly clear when these postcards were written and sent. But time is of no importance. Photographs capture the minutiae of personal recollections, the details of life that mean nothing, yet everything. Their impossible separation becomes a metaphor for human loneliness at the time of war and peace, love and pain, but also for interconnectedness.
Could you tell us more about your background and how you began creating art?
What happened was, when I came to Canada in my 20s, my English was not really great, I was speaking in very simple words, and it was quite frustrating. So I picked the camera that gave me a voice. I originally studied history at university and did some painting. I also enjoy writing. My interest in either of those has never waned. Increasingly, I realize, how much they feed into one another, at times intentionally and at times not. They have added new dimensions to my photography, which has become my main focus. There’s a way to think of it as a continuance.
What does your art aim to say to its viewers?
I have always felt that my goal is not to create meaning but to charge the air so that meaning can occur. It is not a secret that we can photograph effectively what we are truly interested in or—perhaps more importantly—are grappling with. It’s not deliberate but something that happens unconsciously. When I see photographs that are merely about a concept, they fall flat for me. In one of the articles Rainer Fassbinder quoted Douglas Sirk as saying, "you can't make films about something, you can only make films with something, with people, with light, with flowers, mirrors, with blood, with all these crazy things that make it worthwhile." There has to be more than just an idea, an emotional hook then you've caught something alive. Yet my images are not autobiographical. Because people are often captivated by the drama of artists’ lives, they read the pictures as literal reflections of them. However, in photography, there is a great deal of performance. It doesn’t make it less true. It creates an echoing system from the sum of things that have made me: people I've known, the books I've read, the news, the movies I've seen – all, hopefully, carrying it to my audience so they, in turn, can create something for themselves.
Can you tell us about the process of creating your work? What is your daily routine when working?
Because I also teach art at university, my daily schedule varies, but I have to work on photographs every week, otherwise, I feel restless.
My method of working is rather simple. It begins with one or two images where I see something I am fascinated by. It's a bit like a somatic representation of how we stumble and come to order, collect ourselves. Sometimes a photograph I shot a while ago, might sit in a drawer, waiting for its moment. Or I might pick an image I have already used before, but there is something about it that still pulls me back in. Though I think the repeated images should build and evolve. I'm allowing the accident to occur, the revisions to occur within the image, because half of what I know, I know by accident.
I go slowly, there can be a story even without progress or plot, a small change, a bit like a fish swimming against the current just to stay where I am, not getting anywhere, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t effort or even small triumphs. It is a bit like music, as one of the ways in which grace operates through beauty. It’s important to stay patient.
What is the essential element in your art?
Time… I don’t’ mean it in strictly photographic terms. What is essential is that I need to feel outside of time, and it's also contemplation on the nature of time and the artist's [an individual's] place within it. How to link finite time with the flow of time, with infinite time, with its fertility and fruitlessness? A single photograph is a historical moment that unites the inner world of the present culture in which I, as an artist, find myself: and it is an extended time. Not surprisingly, I'm interested in everything from turn-of-the-century processes, polaroid films, digital and camera-less technologies; in the re-cycling of discarded film and found images—cyclic time. It’s a bit like watching the light in the morning—afternoon–evening–night cycle. I become aware of a complex temporal interweaving I am part of. Yet, even though I use historical references in my work, I am not constrained by the limitations of historical replication. Instead, I combine fiction with reality, the past and the present. My photographs are not merely a nostalgic journey into the past, but a look at the present through ‘a rearview mirror’ in order to see what’s coming.
In your opinion, what role does the artist have in society?
Like other visual arts mediums, photography is a potent tool. Technically speaking, it is one of the simplest mediums to master, which is why it gained so much popularity. The bad news is that it is one of the most difficult mediums in which to develop an artistic vision. In fact, the technology that allows so many ways of capturing has let us know how much has been lost. That is one of the reasons that many of my photographs seem to be made by someone who's already dead. That's the astonishing thing, the way the living and the dead are blurred, and the reason why artists like Michelangelo or Goya are just as immediate to me as artists who are working today. It takes time to enter and appreciate their work on a level being beyond being an art tourist, so that it becomes part of the body.
Furthermore, I’d like my work to narrate the experience of reception at the moment of looking. I mean, I'm looking at it, but I'm not photographing what's there, I'm photographing what happens to me at the moment of looking, and also how it affects memory. The beauty of thought and/or emotion is to be able to present its field, to present the fact that it's actually in relation and living and, although it’s somewhat inevitable, to speak of the present as well as the depth of time and tradition. And that is to say, as did the Hebrews, of the ruah, the spirit, or of the muse, as did the Greeks, or of the "great memory’ as did W. B. Yeats, who believed that every writer [I say here every artist too] inherited the memory of his elders, of the human race, and of their culture, since we have two parents, four grandparents, and so forth... Yeats thought that a writer himself could not have many experiences but could count on that vast past experiences, a memory, both real and wished for. Call it "the collective subconscious," which is perhaps more accurate from the Jungian perspective, but "the great memory’ sounds more beautiful, doesn’t it? And it is an inexhaustible spring that opens doors to transcendence.
