by Beth E. Wilson, January 25, 2008
February 13, 2006 by Ion Zupcu
Visitors
to Ion Zupcu’s home and studio in Hopewell Junction are greeted
by a series of intimate portraits of Zupcu’s daughter
Christina—a series he began when she was four, interrupted by
his emigration to the US from Romania in 1991, but which became an
annual ritual when she rejoined him here at age 11. The careful
attention to detail, immaculate gelatin-silver printing, and very
organized, aesthetically sensitive approach to his subject evident in
this series are qualities that carry over to all of his fine art work
as well, including his most recent series, Works on
Paper.
Inspired by the paper models Christina was making
a few years ago in her architectural studies, Zupcu began
photographing tiny, carefully folded and lit bits of paper—the
largest actual subject is no more than one inch across—using
his square-format Hasselblad camera. Enlarged to 15-by-15-inch
prints, the play of light and shadow in these images takes on an
unexpected power, creating abstractions that at times seem like the
photographic rival of the slashed canvases of Lucio Fontana.
This
newest series of Zupcu’s work has now been published by Park
Island Press in a beautifully produced book, Ion Zupcu: Works on
Paper, which is available at the Merritt Bookstores, or through the
photographer’s website, www.ionzupcu.ro. As this goes to press,
Clamp Art gallery is planning a solo show of his work in New York
City, set to open in late March.
—Beth E. Wilson
Ion
Zupcu on his work
Drawn to the square
I
use photography to express my drawings. I don’t have any
knowledge about painting, and I don’t know how to make big
drawings, so what I was doing was very small drawings, just trying to
get down the masses, get to an idea about how just a simple line will
respond within a square, based on the format of my camera. I use
photography to give life to that drawing. It’s not what we all
know about photography; it’s a bit different.
If you try the
spiral [one of the images in the book], starting from other parts of
the square, it’s not going to end up as beautiful as from
there. The square is a very challenging format. It’s a very
balanced size. Whatever you put within the square, there are other
forces that you have to fight. Don’t get it too balanced, or
formal, which I’ve been told I was [doing] at one point. I’ve
had many fights with the square.
Works on
paper
Two of my galleries helped [in] producing the book.
One of them just kept asking that I should have a book of my works on
paper. At that point, the first half was already done, and then I did
the design for the book, and realized there weren’t that many
photographs for it, just 20 images.
I knew that I had about six
months in front of me, and I decided to do another body of work based
on works on paper, too. I made a schedule of my life: every day, from
8 to 12 or 1, I was to be in the studio and just shoot. From 1 to 5 I
was doing drawings, from 5 to later that night I was processing the
film. So after six months, I came up with 20 images [to add to the
book]. [The second series of photographs are] a response to great
artists, whose work I admire. For example, [pointing to the image
Woman in his book], this is a response to Willem de Kooning’s
Women. I cannot reproduce the ugly woman, but at least I can use the
title and respond to that title differently.
Turn 2007 by Ion Zupcu
The
seduction of sepia
I was using sepia tone on the previous
works I had been doing. When this came [work on paper series], I did
the first half with the sepia. For the newer part I felt I needed a
cool tone, so black-and-white worked better. I’ve been
perceived as a sepia-tone photographer. It has a romantic sense. It
has an older, sort of vintage look. I’ve always thought that
people got tired of it, but now I had this new body of work coming
out, and now people keep asking, “Why isn’t it sepia?”
They love sepia, actually. But I don’t see the new images as
being sepia at all. Why? Because most of them are on the dark side,
believe it or not, most of them were photographed on a black
background, black paper. And then through exposure, some parts are
becoming lighter. If that was toned sepia, that would turn into very
dark, very dramatic images. Which is not my intention. My intention
is just the shape.
Western promises
I was exposed to
Western music and art and everything else way before I came here.
Radio Free Europe, which was on 24 hours a day, had music, art,
politics, everything. So I was exposed to Western music, I knew all
about jazz in the 1970s, probably as good as you. It’s my
favorite kind [of music].
The US is my favorite country. I’ve
been a citizen for the past two years. I can’t wait to vote
now. It’s my first [presidential] election. We don’t just
happen to be here. We really respect and love this country. When I
came here, I discovered ICP [the International Center for Photography
in Manhattan], AIPAD [the major fine art photography fair], and
that’s what photography was doing. I always felt like I had
something to say. Even now, there’s only one or two galleries
in Romania that have photography. When I left my country in 1991,
there were no galleries there for photography. You can’t make a
living as a fine art photographer there. There’s much more
opportunity here.
A good pencil
I haven’t
done much with digital [in my fine art photography]. I use digital
now for my commercial work, but I’m just not interested at this
point [in using it for the fine art work]. I don’t care about
what Canon and Nikon are delivering to people. I’m not about
buying cameras and equipment. When you switch to something else, it
could take years. If you’re going from a square [format] to a
rectangle, that takes sometimes at least a year to get used to that
shape. You’re editing, and whatever you decide to have in that
image should get into that square. So you’re framing things
that you have in your mind that fit in a square. And all of a sudden,
you decide to frame everything that you have in your mind in a
rectangle. I’m not about that. I’m more concerned about
getting creative than in trying to figure out how to format with the
technology that they’re using these days. Good photography is
not about the camera. It’s about the eye, and what my thoughts
are. The camera doesn’t say anything.
Birds in Moonlight 2007 by Ion Zupcu
The equipment is like a
pencil. You get used to this pencil, it writes well—wonderful,
just keep it. Don’t change it. If you have to change, you have
to change up here [pointing toward his head], you have to be
creative. I would like to see totally different things than other
people, I hope. That’s what I love about this job, being
creative.
Photographic memory
With
the early images in the book, it’s a diary of who I am at those
different times of my life when I was taking photographs. The circle,
it’s just March 6, 2004. It’s when I took that
photograph. It doesn’t need a title. Being abstract, it
shouldn’t have a title, it should be untitled. That’s the
beauty of photography. Photography creates memory. Without memory
we’re not living. That’s why we know who we are, because
of memory. It doesn’t have smell, it doesn’t have
anything. So it’s just memory. A photograph—that’s
time. A slice of time.