Jerry uelsmann photography biography

Interview

Words: Richard Pitnick

Few artists have done more to explore the aesthetic, creative and technical boundaries of the photographic medium than Jerry Uelsmann.

In this era of facile digital sleight-of-hand, it can be easy to underestimate Uelsmann’s remarkable mastery of craft. A true darkroom alchemist, he combines light, chemistry and the base metal of silver to conjure marvelous dreamscapes rich in symbolic and psychological meaning.

A pioneer of collage and multiple imaging decades before the advent of Photoshop, Uelsmann has produced flawlessly realized and executed images working with multiple enlargers, negatives and an array of highly-refined masking, diffusion, burning and dodging techniques.

Drawn to the freedom engaged in by other artists to produce their own realities, and describing his photography as a form of visual myth-making, Uelsmann uses the camera to record images that form the basis of a highly pe