Portrait Society Gallery, Milwaukee, “Decay Utopia Decay” installation view with wigwam photographed by Francis Ford, January 2013

Portrait Society Gallery, Milwaukee, “Decay Utopia Decay” installation view with Ambrotypes photographed by Francis Ford, January 2013

The fragility of human existence was central to our exhibition, Decay Utopia Decay, at Portrait Society Gallery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Focusing on our lives as collaborative artists and teachers having never been apart in more than 30 years, we increasingly understood our human bondage to the vulnerabilities of the body. Ultra large format, historical process photography directly relates this work to a continuum established by generations of photographers while indulging in a hand-made battle with material defying the contemporary fixation on the virtual. The exhibition ran November 9, 2012 – January 5, 2013, but many works remain available for viewing in the gallery’s archive room by request or appointment 414.870.9930.

View self-portrait images on Flickr

View vegetable portraits on Flickr

View our rock opera Decay Utopia Decay (part 1, part 2, part 3)

View Too Big video about our 30×36 camera

Read blog post on BlogSpot

View photographs by Art Elkon from the opening on FaceBook

Read Express Milwaukee November 12, 2012 review by Judith Ann Moriarty

Read Express Milwaukee November 13, 2012 review by Peggy Sue

Tom, 2009, 10x8 gelatin silver print

On Sunday, August 16, 2009 we went with writer Mike Perry to Tom’s farm. In the process of making photographs with our 8×10 view camera, Tom told the stories that belong to a lifelong collection of experiences and stuff. Posing for photographs altered the relationship with time. Infinite unrecorded moments contribute to the making of a single statement representing an impossibly complex evolution. Invention, persistence, deterioration, obsolescence, and wisdom accumulate on the surface where they were available to the camera. Our photographs, an extended portrait, are published in Visiting Tom: A Man, a Highway, and the Road to Roughneck Grace by Perry. Reviews and interviews about the book have been published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The Cap Times, OnMilwaukee.com, VolumeOne.org, and Boswell and Books blog. The book made The New York Times Book Review Best-Seller list in September 2012.

Silverfield Cheese Factory, Fremont, Wisc., Aug. 15, 2009, 3.5x5x5 palladium print

This summer, we’ll be on the road in our 1962 Rambler station wagon making postcard views of places in our native Wisconsin based on our vintage postcard collection and random wanderings. We welcome your suggestions for Wisconsin sites to photograph! We will post these views as we go at wisconsinproject.blogspot.com

Bob Watt with Model, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1996, 10x8 platinum-palladium print

Bob Watt’s heart failed last week at age 86. His pursuit of beauty via his poetry and art became the subject of our decade long film and book project titled One Million Years is Three Seconds. Bob told us “A million years is like three seconds” to point to how infinitesimal our existences are in the grand scheme of things. He wrote us letters that read like poems ruminating on memories of his Manitowoc County childhood, the Milwaukee art world, the Packers, Badgers, and the models and people in his life.

Electrical Shock from Season's Gleamings, 2004, 10x8 transparency

We did a book once, Season’s Gleamings, and a film, Foot Massage,  about the optimism of the 1960s expressed through aluminum Christmas tree design and electrical devices, some made in our hometown of Manitowoc.  CBS Sunday Morning and The New York Times  covered it. Most Decembers to this day we get calls from writers to talk about the trees from publications like  Der Spiegel in Hamburg or Third Coast Digest Milwaukee. The trip continues.

Amber & Brad in Their Garden, Manitowoc, Wisconsin, 2009, 40x32 archival inkjet print

Gardens have been a favored location. While photographing Amber and Brad in their urban garden a couple summers ago, Brad turned his video camera on us to show the apparatus of our process then posted it on YouTube.

Amber & Brad Cooking Ribs, Manitowoc, Wisconsin, 2004, 12x20 platinum-palladium print

We’ve been photographing Amber and Brad for 10 years in front of and in back of their various homes. Check out the 16mm film we made about the fire pit in their back yard on YouTube.

Ryan A. (6.17.2010), 5.5×3.25 palladium postcard print

When we moved into our studio in 1989, Ryan was a kid playing in the side alley. Now he runs the Boarding House next door. He stood for a portrait the day Wisconsin Public Television documented us working on our Real Photo Postcard Survey Project. View the WPT segment here.

Rich in his Airstream, Two Rivers, Wisconsin, 2008, 12x20 gum over platinum-palladium print

The Milwaukee Art Museum sent Dan Ollman to make a 2-minute video about us making this photograph with our 12×20 banquet camera. A dark cloud blew in while we worked and Rich told his story. View the video here on YouTube.

Portrait Society Gallery booth installation at Next Fair, Chicago. Photo © Art Elkon 2011

The Portrait Society Gallery in Milwaukee took our Green Acres Trip prints to the Next Fair in Chicago in May 2011. View the images here.