Photographers who alter the surface of their prints

Marc LudersMarc Luders combines painting and

photography to create a complex interplay between reality and illusion. In his Figure

series, Luders takes photographs of generally desolate spaces: construction sites,

abandoned parking lots, an occasional pastoral landscape. He then paints standing human figures directly into the scenes. The

figures are derived from photographs of crowded city life furtively shot at street corners, crosswalks, and sidewalks which explains the

self-absorbed stance. Luders plucks these figures out of their urban space and drops

them into a new context. He depends on photography’s inherit tendency to make each

image believable, but there is a disturbing suggestion that these figures are not

comfortable in either their new environments or the original ones.

Randy Hayes

• Randy Hayes painted from photographs for many years before he began painting directly on them. He learned early on that certain gestures in the photographic image are unique to the medium and not necessarily part of other visual experience. He concentrated on these and learned to combine them suddenly in his viewer’s field.

• When he now paints on a grid of photographic prints tacked to the wall of his studio (and later tacked to the wall of an apartment or museum) he is careful not to completely obliterate the underlying imagery. The larger painted image is often derived from one of the photographs. This tends to create an analog for memory: in real time he saw a very large array of things, but the memory of the experience is defined by a single image superimposed on the field of choices.

Emily Grenader

Charcoal on silver gelatin print.

30x47 inches. Charcoal on C-Print. I embellished these photographs of warehouses by drawing on top of the print.