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Photography focuses on vision, imagination

Fred Parker is the consulting curator of photography at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. The News-Press recently interviewed him about the current exhibit, "Contemporary Photography as Phantasy."

Question: First, an obvious question: Why did you choose the title "Phantasy," rather than the more conventional "Fantasy"?

Answer: I made the distinction found in the Oxford dictionary because phantasy, which is more archaic, has a more serious meaning. The predominate sense of fantasy is caprice, whim or fanciful invention, whereas phantasy relates to imagination and more importantly, a visionary notion.

When I invited photographers to enter the show, I included a list of dictionary definitions and a broader one which I had drawn from something I was reading about fantasy postcards: "a visualization of a theory of life that provides a familiarity with mystery." I knew that using the word "mystery" was opening Pandora's box for all kinds of images, but I would also receive enough raw data to channel it down.

Question: As you note in your "Phantasy" catalogue essay, photography is noted for its verisimilitude, its ability to capture reality. Were you looking for something different in the photographs for this exhibition?

Answer: No. I was trying to draw attention to the fact that all photographs are lies. People assume seeing is believing, that photographs are of actual events. It's an illusion that I would like people to occasionally bring up to their conscious level and think about.
I'm not trying to set up a special category of phantasy photographs as opposed to other photographs. The show is so diverse that you should walk away with the feeling that all photographs are phantasy.
There are some pictures in the show which people might expect when they come to see phantasy, but there are new discoveries, too. There are some images in the show which people may not consider phantasy even after seeing the show, but hopefully those photographs will act as catalysts for experiences within the viewer's imagination.

Question: But aren't people more skeptical about seeing and believing in relationship to photographs at a museum?

Answer: It's an assumption we usually make initially and may question later. Image-makers, however, do tend to question that assumption a good deal more.
For example, when some people look at Eileen Cowin's picture of kids watching TV and their parents watching them watch TV, they may think it's just an ordinary photograph of a family. But others see that it's been contrived like a theater piece - Eileen calls them "docu-dramas" - with the wall specially painted a certain color to evoke a sort of strange déjà vu feeling.
It's that feeling, that echo of reality, that makes it worthy to be in a museum, that makes it art.

Question: The "Attitudes" show you curated in 1979 at the museum was massive, including the work of more than 250 artists whereas "Phantasy" has only 74 artists. Did you narrow down the work in a different way?

Answer: For "Attitudes" I did a lot of traveling to see galleries. This time I decided I did not want to go the gallery circuit because I wanted to see the personal stuff, the photographs that perhaps haven't been shown, that the artist pulls out and says, "This is what I've done that I really like."
A good example of this is Joseph Raffael's work in the show. He is known for his large, photorealistic paintings of water lilies, fish and other animals, sort of an upbeat, contemporary Monet. But his pictures in the show are of a rock man in a desert landscape made of collaged magazine pages from National Geographic. When I asked him about possible work for the "Phantasy" show, he pulled out these. There were probably only ten pictures like this in all of his studio, maybe all done on the same weekend. They are totally different from his paintings that I would have found in galleries.
In addition to seeing artist's slides, I also corresponded with them. There was an average of about four letters that went back and forth. Many of their observations are included in the catalogue.

(Quotes interspersed among the pictures in the catalogue range from the artists' own words to those of great authors, and even Kermit the Frog.
From one artist: "Like the bread crumbs in the moonlight of poor Hansel, I have not tried to discover anything new, only to recover that which is lost. This I connect to Baudelaire's concept of the imagination as 'an almost divine faculty which perceives at once, without resort to philosophic methods, the intimate and secret connections between things.'"
From Fyodor Dostoevski: "I admit that two-and-two makes four is an excellent thing, but if all things are to be praised, I should say that two-and-two makes five is also a delightful thing."
From Kermit: "Rainbows have nothing to hide.")

Question: Are people's fantasies surprising? You wrote in your essay that for many photographers, reality is becoming more phantastic and their phantasies become more commonplace, alluding to the popular consciousness that is riveted on computer imagery of video games and science fiction movies.

Answer: Anything can be phantasy if you want it to be. I enjoy seeing the illusions created by photographers, as well as creating illusions in my own mind.
For example, is this a chair or is it not a chair? Now, I'm going to sit down in this chair, but at the same time it's nice for me to imagine that it's something else, or that it isn't even there. These are basic philosophical questions, and some of the people investigating these questions are photographers.
We can go through life and become so jaded that we never ask such questions. I think that is a bit tragic.
As a curator, I am more interested in creating exhibitions that develop questions rather than provide answers.