DAVID JOHNSON + PHILIP MATTHEWS
David Johnson & Philip Matthews
Wig Heavier Than A Boot
8” x 10”
softcover
96 pages, 39 plates
2019
Published by Kris Graves Projects
About the Book:
Wig Heavier Than A Boot brings together photography by David Johnson and poetry by Philip Matthews. Revealing Petal—a drag consciousness as whom Philip manifests to write, and David photographs—the project crosses art-making rituals with isolated performances within domestic spaces and pastoral landscapes. Taken together, the resulting photographs and poems reveal dynamic relationships between author, character, and observer. By articulating a specific creative process in which one identity becomes two, the project in turn opens up a conversation about gender expression through an art-historical lens.
The photographs provide one record of author and character, blurring art-historical masculine and feminine postures. The poems provide another, which elaborate upon the lived experience of being, modeling, and sometimes, obscuring Petal. Subverting the ekphrastic literary tradition, Philip’s poems do not respond to David’s photographs, nor vice-versa. Both forms are made in the present: as David directs the shoot, Philip makes performance notes that give way to the poem. The photographs capture the blend or distinction between Philip and Petal, and the poems hybridize their perspectives, enacting a relationship that is surreal, empowering, and unbearable, as the project title suggests. What is constant is a sense of a person wanting to belong to the place that hosts them (i.e. farmland in rural Wisconsin, the coast of North Carolina, an art museum in St. Louis, a small church), even or especially when the social norms of that place are felt to ostracize them. Both photographs and poems balance narrative with fragmentation and invite multiple interpretations.
David Johnson is an artist, educator, and curator based in Iowa City, IA. He received an MFA in Visual Art from Washington University in St. Louis in 2007 and earned his BFA in Studio Art with an emphasis in Photography from Texas Christian University. In 2011, David was awarded the Great Rivers Visual Arts Award from the Gateway Foundation. This biennial award culminated with his 2012 exhibition institutional etiquette and strange overtones at the Contemporary Art Museum in Saint Louis.
His photographs have been exhibited internationally, including the Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis, Mildred Lane Kemper Museum, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, National Building Museum in Washington D.C. and Rathaus in Stuttgart, Germany. His work can be found in the collection at The Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. Don’t Take Pictures, the Humble Arts Foundation, Lenscratch, Photo-emphasis and Fraction Magazine have featured his work online. David has curated exhibitions for Center of Creative Arts, Paul Artspace and the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum in St Louis. Currently, Johnson is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Photography at the University of Iowa.
Philip Matthews is a poet from eastern North Carolina and the author of Witch (Alice James Books, forthcoming April 2020). Individual poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Tusculum Review, Denver Quarterly, Connotation Press, Sonora Review, and elsewhere. Anchored by site-specific meditation and performance, his practice investigates spiritual, queer power, eco-consciousness, and questions of home. He is the recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Hemera Foundation, and Wormfarm Institute. He has lectured at Washington University in St. Louis and the Kansas City Art Institute, and from 2013-16, he organized public programs at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, emphasizing cross-disciplinary collaboration, artist-driven thinking, and community-directed action. He received his MFA Writing from Washington University in St. Louis and BA English from Tulane University.
Book Design - Amy Thompson, Paper Boat Studios
Book review by Dana Stirling |
First, I will say that it is a little daunting writing anything about a book that features such great poems and writing skills, I hope you bear with me and forgive me in advance.
In a collaboration of poetry and photography Wig Heavier Than A Boot creates a unique look into a character that is manifested through words and visuals in a unique and captivating way - Petal.
The famous claim that "A picture is worth a thousand words" truly comes to mind when thinking of this book. This complex notion that sometimes something can have several meanings and they can all live in harmony in one still image simultaneously, that the visual has a rare and effective way in conveying them in a different way than words, yet this book challenges these dualities and allows both art forms to be prominent and support each other.
I think it is interesting and important to not forget that although these two art schools are the ones we are focusing on there is also another element of performance of the person who is being photographed and that dynamic between the camera and the person In front of it – especially if we are talking about this person as a character within this written/photographed narrative.
From Wig Heavier Than A Boot by David Johnson & Philip Matthews
From Wig Heavier Than A Boot by David Johnson & Philip Matthews
I think a big aspect of this publication is this fantastic collaborative effort of arts and people. This collection of art forms comes together to create a beautifully crafted book that stimulates us in all of our intellectual levels. We need to both read the words, read the images and read the hidden meaning and metaphors within them all. There is a lot of tensions between them and it creates a space for us as viewer to really interpret this work of art with our own life experience, understanding, fears and memories. This is a great example of how creative people come together to elevate and enhancer each other’s talent to create a one of a kind experience.
This book takes on several challenging and tense notions that are placed in front of us like a mirror. The idea of masculinity and femininity, gender, love, lust, fear and more. We are faced with these issues head on having to find our way to look and not shy away from them all. For me this book challenges the idea of identity – what we think we are, what we actually feel inside and how we are perceived to the outside. Petal is a vessel for us all to view our own identity and our own lives and challenges. She is all of us and none of us at the same time.
Petal, who is the main character leads us through the words and is the “face” of the images in some way – as we are reading through her words and experiences, the images become a mirror of who she might be or a representation of her. Usually, I would say that I don’t connect to images that illustrate words as in many of the cases it limits my imagination, makes the words too “specific” and it can cause the enigmatic feeling of the words to disappear. In this case, I think this hybrid of image and text works in the opposite way almost. For me the images are not a direct illustration they stand alone all while mirroring the juxtaposed poems not overbearing them, but communication with them and making their own poem.
The book features Black and white photos only. I think the medium of monochrome photography always has this notion of nostalgia and it allows us to be disconnected from reality. We live and breathe color all day long, the black and white image challenges us as it strips away the familiar and forces us to focus on the image and its content. Time, hour, place is less prominent in this type of photography as it all blends into an array of gray. I personally only work in color in my own work, just because I know how much power a certain color can hold and how it can change an image and its meaning completely which, to me, is exciting. However, in this project I think the aesthetic choice to stay with black and white only allows this book to stay in this third-dimension world – a non-place where this character lives freely and we are just observing.
If you are a fan of poetry or photography or both, this book is a great pleasure to dive into. You can get a copy of the book for yourself and get to know Petal for yourself.
From Wig Heavier Than A Boot by David Johnson & Philip Matthews
From Wig Heavier Than A Boot by David Johnson & Philip Matthews
