John Back

“Monuments”

A series of artworks produced in editions of 2 to 4 each, on aluminum or wood panels, printed by the artist with photographic emulsion , oil paint and reduction by abrasion.  The images have been appropriated from a variety of sources.  The “man made” are on aluminum, and the “natural” on wood.  Produced between 1989 and 1995. Each image is unique within the edition.

A critical appreciation by Ted Castle.

John Back's Images

The art of John Back is an image of an image of an image. The images are photographically achieved and he is a photographer, but they are not just photographs, they are primary images of the acts of Man and the acts of God. I say God, rather than Nature, because I think it is necessary to include ourselves in Nature, whereas we are evidently remote from God. These primary images are, in any case, of two different types. They are even printed photographically on different materials--plywood for God's acts and aluminum for Man's acts. I say primary images because they are all images of the most extraordinarily extreme moments that can be experienced on earth. The eruption of a . volcano, the visit of a tornado, the great pyramid of Egypt, the great wall of China. Back's work shows things he himself has never seen, except in a book.

As a child in Racine, Wisconsin (he is the second of three Siblings), John used to love to look at a wonderful book which he still has with him. More than just an atlas, this book, published in Chicago in 1947 is called The International Standard Encyclopedic World Atlas & Gazetteer. Since it is encyclopedic there are little articles about zeppelins, volcanoes, pyramids and so on, and many of these tiny essays are illustrated with a black and. white picture of the thing being revealed to the presumably young reader. Many of these images made a strong impression on the boy that the man has not forgotten. Not every image he uses in this series is from that book, but many of them are, and they are all extraordinary.

The first step in Back's process is, of course, the selection of the image. Using a modern 4" x 5" view camera, he copies the image. The image is not necessarily one that will reproduce ideally well, and when it is enlarged, any flaws and the dots which permit printing the image are revealed. But the image is not chosen because it has flaws, but because it is primary. One of the most effective, however, is also rather damaged in transmission. It shows a standing man wearing a hat, firing a pistol round into the heart of a shirtless man lying face up on the earth. The roughness of the image printed on aluminum rivals Goya's Disasters of War. One of the rarest images in the group is the funnel of a tornado or twister apparently moving toward the viewer in a flat landscape in the middle foreground of which appears something abstract, a white right angle. Whether or not one figures out or is told that this is caused by a telephone pole and its shadow on the ground, the image is haunting. I was also shown a version of this image with this white right angle eliminated, but the first one is better because it shows a minor act of God with a minor act of Man.

Printed on plywood which has been painted with photosensitive emulsion, the parts of the twister image that are white reveal the swirls of the grain of the wood veneer. I'm sure that this particular piece of wood has been chosen because the grain enhances the image as well as adding color, but it is possible that a randomly selected piece of plywood might do just as well to depict the vibrations of a tornado. John Back found a supply of old offset printing plates which he uses as backing for the man-made wonders that he selects. In these pictures, the parts of the images that are supposed to be white turn out to be the color of aluminum. Occasionally, Back burnishes these highlights with steel wool, making parts of them shine brightly. This technique uses an aspect of the metal that would otherwise be obscured by the photo emulsion. In both cases, metal and wood, the reality of the backing is emphasized in aid of the astonishing image, such as the explosion of the airship Hindenburg moored at Lakehurst, New Jersey in 1937.

Frederick Ted Castle, New York, 27 January 1993

Large Twister 1995  48x36 inch edition of 2