Scott McMahon & Ahmed Salvador, Response Time, Fujichrome film in light box, 2015, The Sol Mednick Gallery of Photography
Response Time: The University of the Arts Presents Photographers Scott McMahon ’95 & Ahmed Salvador ’95, The Sol Mednick Gallery of Photography
“What will become of you and me
(This is the school in which we learn …)
Besides the photo and the memory?
(… that time is the fire in which we burn.)” – excerpt Calmly We Walk through This April’s Day by Delmore Schwartz
How do you maintain a long distance friendship after college? For Scott McMahon & Ahmed Salvador the answer is to make art through the mail. The photographers send each other bits of photo paper or film across the country which sometimes gets accidentally exposed in the envelop or they purposely poke holes so that light leaks onto the photographs. The results are a true collaboration because the two artists really have no idea who did what or how it happened, they just know when it works.
“In music, a call and response is a succession of two distinct phrases usually played by different musicians, where the second phrase is heard as a direct commentary on or response to the first. It corresponds to the call-and-response pattern in human communication and is found as a basic element of musical form, such as verse-chorus form, in many traditions.” – Wikipedia
For the image above the artists buried film in sand with a detonation fuse and then let it burn. The mystical result is practically cosmological and reminded me of the recently released NASA photo of the Andromeda Galaxy, the abstract image offers the floating feeling of deep space like a swimming in a sea of stars. The sand responds to the eye like star points, the fuse sparks streak across the image like neutron star explosions, swirls of color eddy like galaxies. In the dim gallery my mind wandered across space and time, the abstracted image communicating the unknowable depths of inner thought and outer space.
Scott McMahon & Ahmed Salvador, Response Time, 2015, The Sol Mednick Gallery of Photography
Scott McMahon & Ahmed Salvador, Response Time #4, 2015, The Sol Mednick Gallery of Photography
Response Time collects several forms of photography, from exposed negative film strips in light boxes to large format inkjet prints mounted and framed to photo paper mounted on board with the corners allowed to curl, each image presented thoughtfully and with precision. Even though there is a playful nature to the artwork the underlying seriousness of the subject matter conveys the tenuous nature of life. Natural forms and fractals emanate from the photographs like staring at the sky or llusory palinopsia.
Scott McMahon & Ahmed Salvador, Response Time #1, 2015, The Sol Mednick Gallery of Photography
“Mail art (also known as Postal art and Correspondence art) is a populist artistic movement centered on sending small scale works through the postal service. It initially developed out of the Fluxus movement in the 1950s and 60s, though it has since developed into a global movement that continues to the present.” – Wikipedia
Photography offers the viewer a false sense of time, capturing a moment that doesn’t truly exist since it disappears like a Higgs Boson into nothingness as soon as it happens. We want to preserve our memories and relationships as long as possible but time steals a little bit of thought as new experiences are added to our existence on this astral plane. Scott McMahon & Ahmed Salvador, Response Time preserves memory like a holographic three dimensional thought bubble in an ancient alien language.
Scott McMahon & Ahmed Salvador, Response Time, The Sol Mednick Gallery of Photography
“May memory restore again and again
The smallest color of the smallest day:
Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn.” – excerpt Calmly We Walk through This April’s Day by Delmore Schwartz
Scott McMahon & Ahmed Salvador, Response Time, through February 6, 2015, The Sol Mednick Gallery of Photography, Terra Hall, 15th floor, 211 South Broad Street, Philadelphia, Pa. Closing reception on Thursday February 5th, from 4:00 – 7:00.
Photographs courtesy of Ahmed Salvador
Read the Response Time press release on DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog
Written by DoN Brewer except where noted.
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