Jessica Thalmann's Philosophy is that a photograph is just a piece of paper
to destroy, rip, tear, and cut.
The taking of a photograph is only one component of Jessica Thalmann's artistic practice. Jessica is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and writer who divides her time between Toronto and New York. With a Master of Fine Arts in Advanced Photographic Studies from ICP-Bard College (New York) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from York University (Toronto), Jessica's knowledge of photography, film, and sculpture influence her work. Using her own images, and archival materials, she prints, cuts, assembles, and folds photographs into a variety of manipulated forms.
The inspiration behind her work stems from her integral belief that a photograph does not depict reality, or the "true" story.
"There is a romanticism around photography that we need to get over," she says.
"We think photos are documents of reality but in fact the camera lies. There is a hand behind the camera that stages and frames. We have lofty goals for our photographs, but they do not depict the world as it really is."
Destroying and reinventing images is a painstaking step-by-step process for Jessica, who believes that researching, analyzing, and planning are as much a part of being a photographer as taking a photograph.
"Utopos (Henry Hall Building in 1969)", one of Jessica's current projects, stems from a personal family tragedy that happened when she was four years old. "In 1992, there was a shooting at Concordia University: a professor killed several of his colleagues. Mr uncle, Phoivos Ziogas, was one of the professors massacred. Also, in 1969, students took over the ninth floor of the same building where the 1992 shooting happened. They destroyed engineering equipment and threw thousands of IBM computer cards out of the window which littered the street like a blanket of snow It was one of the most violent riots in Canadian history . . . With the Utopos project, there is, for me, an emotional resonance and a desire to understand. This work focuses on returning to that building, to that site of trauma and, as I film and photograph it, on trying to understand what happened there. It is a delicate and cathartic process for me."
For the Uptopos project, Jessica scoured the university archives until she found a black and white image that depicted the 1969 riot at the exact moment when the students were throwing IBM cards out of the window. Jessica overlaid colour onto the image and then printed the large 82" x 32" image into eight prints and eight sections. She cut and trimmed each print and folded them into equal lateral triangles. She says, " From these organic shapes, I was able to fold and shape the prints and then pin them directly onto the wall."
Jessica manipulates most of her images manually in her studio, adding shadows and strange distortions, with the end goal of finding the hidden beauty in buildings others don't find. She goes through a series of emotions, including frustration, anger, reverence, and wonder, when trying to get at something that a photograph is not actualizing for her. "At a certain point in my practice I was steeped in other's photography, how beautiful and holy their images were. It was only when I gave myself permissions not to create something beautiful, to move from holding a photography as holy, that I could create something beautiful out of something I destroyed." Jessica says, "That is not going to work for everyone; it is a niche I have found for myself."
Jessica's advice for aspiring photographers is to read Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes (1980) and On Photography by Susan Sontag (1973). Barthes explores the nature and essence of photography, and Sontag studies the force of photographic images that are inserted between experience and reality.
She also photographers not to get into their own heads too much: to step away from their thoughts and start using their hands. "Not making work is not the solution to not making work. That is the best advice I can give to anyone," she says. "Money should not be your primary goal; just make the work you want to make."
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