CENTER - Art & Oppression

© Kelly Eckel
Ashok Sinha
New York, NY 
Calli P. McCaw
New York, NY 
Carl Moore
Santa Fe, NM 
Claire A. Warden
Phoenix, AZ 
Danny MCCarty
Hood River, OR 
Dan Gemkow
Chicago, IL 
Ellen Jantzen
Santa Fe, NM 
Evalyn Bemis
Santa Fe, NM 
Francis Baker
Oakland, CA 
Jane Szabo
Los Angeles, CA 
Jerry Takigawa
Monterey, CA 
Joan Fitzsimmons
Hamden, CT 
Karen Novotny
Santa Fe, NM 
Kathleen Clark
Glendale, CA 
Kellye Eisworth
Denver, CO 
Kelly Eckel
Albuquerque, NM 
Kerry Skarbakka
Corvallis, OR 
Lynne Buchanan
Asheville, NC 
Manuel and Oscar Gil
Brooklyn, NY and Ithaca, NY 
Marcus DeSieno
Ellensburg, WA 
Marilyn Maxwell
Santa Fe, NM 
Marsha Lane Foster
Rogers, AR 
Megan Jacobs
Santa Fe, NM 
Patricia Galagan
Santa Fe, NM 
Patti Levey
Santa Fe, NM 
Paul Rider
Wyncote, PA 
Pete Eckert
 
Pilar Law
Santa Fe, NM 
Tama Baldwin
Iowa City, IA 
The Furies: Patti Levey, Lauren Ayer, Kristin Barendsen
Santa Fe, NM 
Wes Bell
Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada 
© 2017 CENTER

Art & Oppression: Artist's Statement

Wes Bell

Rapt

This series of photographs focuses on trees that have been used as supports for a variety of chains, cables, fasteners, or sections of fencing utilized to restrict access to the landowner’s property. Over time, as these trees continue to grow with these constricting bands of material, the dialectical tension between man and nature builds to a particularly emotional pitch by exposing the relentless nature of time. As the wires, cables and chains cut into the trunk of the trees restricting sap flow (a process literally called ‘strangulation’), the organic vegetal response seems to embody human, visceral feelings of pain, emotional constriction and dogged survival.

Entitled Rapt, this series of fifty-four photographs made in 2013 and 2016 opens the landscape into a series of tightly focused moments of intense engagement between man and nature. The sites I photographed spoke to me strongest in the days of transition from winter to spring when the scene was enveloped in flat, grey light and there was no foliage on the trees to distract from them.

All of the images were shot using black and white film in a medium square format camera. Given the focus of the subject matter on the various physical, material processes of decomposition, oxidation, and the organic workings of plant life, it was critical to the logic of the series to maintain the immediacy of their chemical, indexical imprint on the film, and its transition onto a slightly warm tone, semi-matte, fiber based paper used for gelatin silver prints, creating a substantial presence that would have been impossible to achieve digitally.