James Welling
1951–
Trained in conceptual and video art at the California Institute of the Arts, James Welling taught himself photography on a second-hand camera and photographic processing before moving to New York in 1978. There, in 1980, he began to produce photographs of crumpled pieces of aluminum foil, torn from a large roll borrowed from the restaurant at which he worked, sometimes painting the surface of the foil in black and emphasizing the shadows through dramatic lighting. He developed the photographs as very dark contact prints, the same size as the negative from his four-by-five-inch view camera, in order to draw a direct link between object and image. The result is what Welling has termed “obscure looking pictures,” characterized by a densely textured field of light and shadow: three dimensions depicted in two.
Although Welling terms these works “abstract photographs,” he acknowledges that “a photograph can never really be abstract because it’s always of something.” The works seem nonrepresentational and give no clue as to orientation, yet evocative titles such as The Wayfarer 1980 point to the pictures’ potential to carry meaning or narrative, and Welling has described them as “glittering, emotional landscapes of an unknown dimension.” The aluminum foil works thus explore both the material and conceptual properties of photography itself, highlighting the way in which it allows meaning to be created in the mind of the viewer.
Introduction
James Welling (born 1951 in Hartford, Connecticut) is an American artist, photographer and educator living in New York City. He attended Carnegie-Mellon University where he studied drawing with Gandy Brodie and at the University of Pittsburgh where he took modern dance classes. Welling transferred to the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California in 1971 and received a B.F.A. and an M.F.A. in the School of Art. At Cal Arts, he studied with John Baldessari, Wolfgang Stoerchle and Jack Goldstein.
Wikidata identifier
Q6145303
Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License . Accessed May 19, 2025.
Introduction
Abstract photographer whose work addresses the conceptual boundaries of photography as a medium. His abstract work is comprised of various media, such as photograms, traditional silver gelatin prints, Polaroids, and digital prints.
Country of birth
United States
Roles
Artist, abstract artist, multimedia artist, painter, photographer, video artist
ULAN identifier
500005043
Names
James Welling
Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed May 19, 2025.
