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Eric William Carroll <essays>

from 'Doomed To Repeat: Art, Memory & Historical Reenactment' by Chris Atkins
originally published in the Pay Attention: GM 08 catalog
Fall 2008

Eric Carroll's photograms, large scale lo-fi photographs printed on
blueprint paper without developing chemicals, a lens, or shutter, are
mono-chromatic contraries to the monumental over-produced color images
that many photographers are printing these days. Carroll's work is
more interested in subtracting the camera machinery and photographic
fussiness to see the limits of what photography can accomplish as an
imaging-making device and its ability to record events. For a recent
project at Augsburg College, All Buildings Dream in Blueprints
(Student Art Show) (2008), Carroll covered the gallery wall with
photosensitive blueprint paper and quickly rehung the immediately
preceding exhibition. Then, exposing the gallery to light, the framed
paintings and drawings slowly burned their imprints into the paper.
What's left is a strange remnant that only records the spectral
outline of each work in the exhibition that isn't overly concerned
with the details of how each painting or drawing actually looked;
Carroll's photogram records the work in the Student Art Show at the
level of lingering presences as they were (re)installed, without the
specific details that would make it easier for us to recognize them.

For GM 08, Carroll continued with a similar technique where he created
a photogram of his band's rehearsal studio. While the work is not a
record of another artwork in the same way that All Buildings… is, it
is analogous to other records produced in studios like cds, vinyl lps,
and mix tapes. Each of these compresses time-lapsed information into a
physical object. Carroll's photogram, as it is installed on the wall,
compresses the three dimensions of the studio and the delayed
photogram exposure time into the flatness of the blueprint paper. This
compression of time, space, and information into one location means
that something must be omitted and that whatever record is left
behind, photogram or otherwise, it represents only a portion of the
studio space. The key is to not compare the representation to the
actual place but look at the gap between the two as the creative
additions/subtractions of information that are made in each and every
artistic representation.