Lilac-breasted Roller (Coracias caudate) with Kumquats, 2010 � Sarah Cusimano Miles Sarah Cusimano Miles earned a BFA from Jacksonville S...
Lilac-breasted Roller (Coracias caudate) with Kumquats, 2010 � Sarah Cusimano Miles
Sarah Cusimano Miles earned a BFA from Jacksonville State University as well as a BS in Psychology and an MFA in Photography from the University of Alabama. Her work has been published and exhibited regionally and nationally and is held in a number of private and corporate collections. She currently teaches at Jacksonville State University and was recently interviewed by Kalani Odum for our Contemporary Photographer Series (CPS).
You have a BS in psychology. What motivated you to make the transition from that into photography?
I studied psychology in college as a concentration because I was planning on going into a medical field after undergraduate school. I had always been fascinated by the body and mind relationship and in the way the mind creates meaning from our experiences. Although I had been using a camera since I was a child, I decided that I wanted to learn how to develop film and print, so in my senior year I began to take photography classes. It was then that I knew that I wanted to devote my energy to becoming a photographer. Since I was so far into my degree I finished in psychology, but I took photography classes until I graduated and then subsequently audited classes. After college when someone asked what I did, I said that I was a photographer, and if they asked me if I could photograph something for them I said "sure" and would figure it out. Much later I went back to school and got a BFA and MFA in Photography.
In your artist bio it mentions that your work utilizes the interpretation of objects and their symbolic associations as a way of commenting on the psychology of human experiences. Can you talk a little bit more about how your work focuses on this idea?
I am interested in the value and meaning that an individual can invest in an object, and how associations with an object can shift from person to person depending on the individual experiences. Why do we keep some objects and not others? Why do some people seem more attached to objects than others? What contributes to the preciousness of an object and affection associated with it? How do we create meaning through possession of objects?
When the object is put in the context of other objects, as in a collection or a still life composition, the relationship of the objects form new connotations that influence their interpretations. The medium of photography contributes to this process because it removes the physical object from the direct presence of the viewer. In this way, the photograph functions as an additional filter for experiencing the object. And, just as an object can carry certain value, so can a photograph function as an object, a souvenir, holding in it the same emotional investment.
Both bodies of work deal with objects that are parts of collections. The earlier work was internal, exploring the psychology of symbolism and individual relationships to objects. Solomon's House is more external, incorporating historical visual language in art and addressing the broader theme of the human relationship to animals as a metaphor of our own existence. Throughout history, in art and science, and religion and myth, man has studied animals and used their likenesses and characteristics as descriptive or narrative mirrors for humanity. The conquest of man over beast represents the power of survival on a most primal level, and the natural history collection allows for intimate study of the exotic and wild in the safest of settings. Upon entering the collection there is reverence and awe, not unlike entering a consecrated sanctuary. These relics are held in stasis so that we can marvel at the beauty of their exotic nature - the texture of fur, the delicacy or roughness of tissue, the vibrant color and pattern of markings. At the same time, they are halted in the completion of the cycle of birth/life/death/decay. The photograph traditionally functions in this same way - holding objects in stasis - fossilizing a moment in order to contemplate it at a later date.
Red Deer (Cervus elaphus) with Specimens, 2010 � Sarah Cusimano Miles
What is your process like for choosing and arranging specific objects to use in your work pertaining to human experiences? Some of your work utilizes the technique of shooting multiple frames in order to achieve a higher resolution, can you tell me a little bit more about that process?
In Solomon's House many of the images exist as double constructions; once as the objects as assembled to photographed, and again as the frames are combined to form the final image. In both bodies of work, the process of deciding which objects to include in the still life is primarily an intuitive and automatic activity.
For the work at the natural history museum, I search my kitchen for various fruits or vegetables, and if I don't find anything of interest I go to the store and see what appealing produce is in stock. I also comb my cabinets for heirloom vessels and linens as possible backdrops and props to combine with the museum's assortment. In wandering between the shelves of the museum I see what specimens seem to resonate with the objects I brought that day, and in many instances it is a very formal decision based on color, shape, or texture. Other times certain organisms seem to complement one another contextually. On the day I photographed the Red Deer (Cervus elaphus) with Specimens, some objects had been moved around and thus revealed small jars containing a possum, a newt, and a skink. I put them on a shelf together and they made me consider the similarity of the tableau to a cabinet of curiosities - the Victorian tangent to the natural history museum.
The second part of the construction of the photograph relates to the way in which I record the still life and assemble the individual frames to present the final photograph as a single image. I photograph the still life using a tripod and move along the scene to record it in a grid, so that there is overlap between the single images. This allows the capture of fine detail in each segment on the scene - essentially a close-up in sections. Because of the lack of space I photograph at a close distance, so the depth of field is very shallow. To compensate for this, I make exposures with different focal points so that I can combine them later to extend the depth of field and create an image in which a large majority of it is in sharp focus. I may take seven or eight exposures of the same section and edit them so that I get the most image area in focus. Next, I layer the sections, align them, and mask the areas that are not sharp so that when I combine them everything from the foreground to the background is in acceptable focus. The outcome creates a hyper-real space than can be uncomfortable to view because it is not a familiar photographic space. Usually, because the lens works similarly to our eyes, there is one focal point, and therefore our eyes are naturally directed to that sharpest point. The overabundance of information can force the viewer to scan the photograph as one does in observing the three-dimensional world, and then form a perceptual reconstruction by processing the bits of information through the various regions of the brain.
After merging the depth of fields of each segment, I use Photoshop to stick the images together to form a single, seamless image that retains the detail of the individual segments. The space is abstracted as I transform it to fit the needs of the composition. Through the software, I am able to pull edges, stretch areas, or add or subtract elements or space as needed. While the standard algorithms of Photoshop can give a starting point to the merging of the individual frames, there are many adjustments and formal decisions that must be made to finalize the image so that appears seamless. These photographs are presented as if they existed in front of the camera in this state, at a single moment in time, and there is little obvious evidence that they are composites. This interests me in that it plays with the truth-claim of the photograph - the assumption that a photograph mirrors reality and is a slice of time. While generally speaking photography is subjective, the digital image is infinitely malleable. These photographs represent many more than one moment in a single image. They do not illustrate reality any more than the mounted animals in the exhibit halls or the still life paintings of the 17th-century represent reality, but only one version of it.
Untitled from the Penumbra series � Sarah Cusimano Miles
The objects used for Solmon's House came from the Anniston Museum of Natural History in Anniston, Alabama. The material you're working with in Penumbra seems to overlap especially with your use of preserved animals. Did the objects in Penumbra come from a similar archive and is that important to the work?
The photographs in Penumbra, which were executed in traditional, silver-based photography, are also about collections of objects and our relationships to them; however, the objects are from personal collections as opposed to a public collection, and generally exhibit a more ominous mood. Some of the photographs include remnants of animals in the images that can contribute to an anthropomorphic interpretation, and can also lend to simultaneous attraction due to curiosity, and repulsion due to morbidity.
In many of these works, I was drawing from the rich visual lexicon of Catholicism, and although these images are not religious, I am drawn to that visual vocabulary. There is an inherent quality of an overlap between disgust and allure in much of the imagery to which I am attracted. By choosing objects that have some symbolic significance or familiarity, and combining them, a new resonance can be created between them and the original associations may be transmuted. One example is the image of the petrified rat on the hamster wheel. I photographed this rate in countless combinations, and it is such a strong object, it couldn't be read as anything but a dead rat. In the final image, it becomes an animated component of the composition, suggesting new connotations. The objectness of the rate is subverted by the combination of objects and ultimately the photograph is the final object. These themes, collections of objects and our relationships to them, anthropomorphic interpretation, and art historical and religious motifs continue to be present in the photographs in Solomon's House.
Goliath Heron (Ardea goliath) with Pomegranate and Specimen, 2010 � Sarah Cusimano Miles
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