2026 SPE Annual Conference: Catalyst for Exchange
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Imagemaker: Alex Krajkowski
Friday, September 13 - 1:00PM to 1:45PM
Gruening 409
My work focuses on a combination of conceptual, emotive, and aesthetic ideas, centering around a surrendering of control to a variety of external, semi-controlled processes used to create pieces.
By exposing prints to obscure chemical processes and the flow of water, using simple machines to create exposures on gelatin silver paper, or twisting paper into dramatic new forms, my work becomes a collaboration between myself and the process. In many cases, it is the surrendering of control to the external elements that allows for the genesis of new visual decisions which form the piece, as best exemplified through my body of work Machine Based Artistic Production (MBAP), from 2014-2015. This body of work is made up of a number of unique light paintings created with a fleet of small, self-propelled machines. I set these machines in motion across gelatin silver paper, and they decide their own paths along the page, creating flashes of light that mark the surface of the paper. Their motions are captured in the silver of the paper as marks resembling brushstrokes, acting as a recording of the dance these machines made across the page.
While my work is deeply rooted in conceptual concerns, ranging from the idea of reproduction in the photographic process to the relationship between creator and tool, they retain a strong formal edge as well, combining form and idea into pieces that are as pretty as they are thought-provoking. At the same time, each work also contains significant emotional elements. Each work begins with a process of my design that is ultimately put into the hand of an external actor (water, light, machines, etc.), to create a visual exploration of my own anxiety and control issues. At the same time, each piece represents the risk of ceding control to another - another object, another material, another viewer - as I begin to navigate a queer narrative in my professional work that is reflective of the risks related to the queer narrative of my private life.
Through presenting my work, I hope to introduce students and educators to other alternative routes of both exploring and discussing the photographic medium, through my work's experimental quality and flirtation with concept, aesthetics, and a way of dealing with personal narrative and feelings.
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Alex Krajkowski
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