Color Light Abstractions - Wynn Bullock: Revelations

Watch a slideshow of color light abstractions from photographic works by photographer Wynn Bullock. In the 1960s, Bullock's continued attraction to the phenomenon of light became even more overt in an innovative series of color abstractions. To create these stunning and unusual images, Bullock constructed an apparatus out of a piece of redwood with deep notches cut into one side. Up to ten layers of glass rested horizontally in the notches. On the glass he placed various materials -- a jar of honey, shards of glass, colored cellophane -- that refracted light in spectacular ways. Bullock surrounded the whole structure with floodlights, spotlights, and prisms, and manipulated items to create compelling arrangements of light while peering at his composition through the ground glass of his camera. In most cases, he photographed not the objects themselves, but rather their effects in space. Particularly exciting to the artist was the concept that light could be used as an abstract medium in photography, allowing for a plasticity more often associated with other arts. The mesmerizing color images that resulted from Bullock's concentrated, multiyear effort to record light abstractions were quite literally ahead of their time. While they bear a resemblance to images of outer space taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, no such inspirational images were available to Bullock during his life. And like other photographers experimenting with color photography in the 1960s, Bullock struggled to find ways of presenting his work satisfactorily. Unhappy with most of the color printing papers available to him, he often resorted instead to projecting the images onto walls via color slides—a practice that left his archive with hundreds of transparencies but little in the way of vintage color prints, thus obscuring until recently the importance of this work in the larger scheme of his career. The work shown here are recent prints and digital projections made from high resolution scans of Bullock's original transparencies. The High Museum, as well as the artist's archive at the Center for Creative Photography, preserves a selection of vintage color prints that are too delicate to withstand prolonged exposure to exhibition lighting. On view at the High Museum of Art through January 15, 2015. www.High.org/Bullock