Colby Caldwell

Fig (23) , 2003, ink jet print mounted and hand waxed on wood panel Colby Caldwell

 

    Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, Colby Caldwell studied Twentieth Century European History at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. Afterwards, he attended Corcoran School of Art, now called Corcoran College of Art and Design, where he received his B.F.A. in 1990. At the Corcoran School of Art, Caldwell received the Excellence in Photography Award in 1990 as well as the Eugene Weiss Scholarship.   He is currently Assistant Professor of Art at St. Mary's College of Maryland. From 1998 to 2002, he served on the faculty of the Corcoran College of Art and Design.

   In 1996, Colby Caldwell was invited to participate at Interfoto , an international conference on photography and Russia held in Moscow. In 2001 he was curator of Practice Makes Perfect : Works by Emerging Artists in Washington, D.C. He is active as a Board Member of Transformer Gallery also in Washington, D.C. He has presented guest lectures at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. (1995,1996) Edinburgh College of Art in Edinburgh, Scotland (2000) and at Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (2003-2004).

            Since the late 1980s, Colby Caldwell has had solo and group exhibitions, lectured at various universities and colleges, collaborated with other artists and published catalogues. He has exhibited at the Kathleen Ewing Gallery in Washington, D.C. (1988-1989), the Emilio Navarro Gallery in Madrid, Spain (1992-1993), as well as several times at Hemphill Fine Arts, located in Washington, D.C., where he exhibited [still life] in 2003. Among his many group exhibitions, in 1991 he exhibited "Portraits" in Basel, Switzerland and in 1996, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, Caldwell's work was shown in an exhibition called "Reimagining the Real".   This year, Colby Caldwell exhibited with artists Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, Sally Mann, Bernd and Hilla Becher, and others in "The Landscape in Contemporary Photography", a show in conjunction with publication of book by National Geographic.   In 1999, he collaborated with Bernard Welt on Ordinary Eternal Machinery , a video piece. His work was recently selected for inclusion in the 2005 Corcoran Biennial, Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington, D. C.

Artist's Statement

     Roland Barthes wrote in Camera Lucida, " Painting can only feign reality without having seen it." The lens, unlike the painter, must have something out there to record. Depending on how you look at it, the experience (or memory) is either the ghost of the photograph, or the photograph is the ghost of the experience. Or perhaps they are the two things at once.

     Just as a memory originates as a tangible experience, - an actuality - a photograph begins in a similar manner, as tangible evidence of an event - of a transaction between the photographer and the subject. And just as a memory is recollected again and again - with each recollection being a "copy" of the previous - the process in which I put my work through simulates this concept. This is achieved through combining older methods of working with newer, ever-evolving processes. I begin by shooting super 8 film with an old family camera, project that onto my studio wall, copy it with a digital video camera, (which then allows me to import it into the computer), and output it using a state-of-the-art digital printer onto arches hot press watercolor paper. I then mount it on a wood structure and hand -wax the surface to protect it.

     Each time I transfer my image, information is gained, not subtracted. Much like a recollected memory. What is lost is a supposed truth, but what is gained is a more "fictional" truth grounded in the integrity of the process that infers it's on unique history that exists constantly in the present.

     The past inside the present.

     The work in the widest sense transcends some of the common assumptions of postmodernism by reintegrating the social with the personal and by genuinely exploring and appreciating certain cultural traditions, rather than dismissing them outright.

Colby Caldwell

Winter 2004