Talking before a gallery audience of nearly 70 people on Saturday afternoon, Baltimore filmmaker and artist John Waters led an artist’s talk at Greg Kucera Gallery about his photography and other works on view from his series "Last Call: Photographs and Sculpture" exhibiting through May 8. He filled his informal presentation with humorous and engaging anecdotes about his photography and film.
Drunkenness, medical birth, sex, death, celebrity and serial killer personalities, film, and related subjects inform the collection of images Waters produced in his collage-like work. These are familiar subjects culled from terrain explored through the lens of his filmmaking career spanning nearly four decades.
Waters described how, by accident, he embarked on an obsessive interest in photography. Almost ten years ago, he wanted to get a still image from one of his earlier films — one he never had. He felt that a static image from the film could capture a unique essence of it, and provide a document of his memory of the film. While watching a video from the film, he snapped a photograph of the scene to isolate the image for a production still, called “art” in the industry. The result led to his exploration of the endless possibilities of finding moments in his films — and from other works; to extract images that could be derived from photography.
Initially, his first photographs contained compositional and reproduction flaws. He remembered when he used to be embarrassed about the imperfections of his earliest films. But imperfection is esteemed in modern art today, he said, and no longer worries about the flaws and mistakes in his images.
End Reel (2002) depicts a projectionist’s hand-written note — similar to a changeover cue — regarding the end of the film reel. Waters mentioned that a film audience will never see the end reel notes during a film screening as the reels are changed, but he wanted to have a document of this note for his collection. In another film-related work, Epic (2003) is short-hand for what the film The Poseidon Adventure is about: a sinking cruise ship. The image shows the film’s opening title in reverse, upside-down.
Several other works capture interesting juxtapositions and accidental imagery that offer amusing visual puns and wordplay. In 7734 (2003) Waters reveals Catholic-school code for a so-called “bad word”; when the work is rotated upside-down, “7734” becomes “hELL.” Cameraman machismo is subverted with a double-entendre in Swish Pan. And Glinda the Good Witch gets morphed with the Wicked Witch in a blurry cauldron of blue, pink and green in Wicked Glinda.
John Waters, commenting on working as an artist, described his attraction to art world elitism in contrast to his work as a filmmaker. Comparatively, as a filmmaker, he must try to appeal to everyone while working within the industry’s ratings system. However, he felt he has more freedom as an artist, and aspires to appeal to just one elitist person who recognizes his art — and to no one else. He said it’s like speaking a “secret lingo,” participating in a “secret club” and speaking the way bikers’ talk.
