by Eva Dameron
Daily Lobo
Robert and Shana Parkeharrison don't just take photographs. They make them.
The Parkeharrisons attended UNM in the early '90s - now they've returned with their traveling photography exhibit, "The Architect's Brother," showing in the University Art Museum through December 21. The exhibition's title shares its name with their book, voted one of the 10 Best Photography Books of the Year in 2000 by the New York Times.
"The Architect's Brother" is a body of work divided into five different sections, each making up a small series.
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Their photographs take at least a month to make.
"All of the work in the show was made without digital manipulation," Shana said. "The techniques that were used included manual photography, paper negatives and painting on the photographs."
She said when they started on these works Photoshop was not widely used.
"Also, the various techniques add qualities to the images that Photoshop could not," she said. "Over the past two years, we have started to integrate Photoshop into our work. Regardless of what techniques we use, our process is lengthy."
She said they rarely use backdrops. They mostly use real landscapes or collage images into the backgrounds.
Robert said they build all the props out of discarded materials. They build extensions and wires that physically connect the man to the earth. They also build organic machine, like in the photographs "Breathing Machine" and "Listening to the Earth."
"We like to use things from this modern society that are discarded once used," Robert said. "We reinterpret them into these kinds of alternative energy sources or machines that help connect to nature, or connect to a lost connection to the earth."
Shana compared the photographs' themes to Woody Allen's movie "Sleeper."
"Woody Allen wakes up and finds himself in the future where there's all of this technology," she said. "He finds, in a cave, an old Volkswagen bug, and he's the only one who knows how to use it. People are trying to figure out how to reinvent what it is, but he knows its purpose."
She said this film is comparable because Allen's character knows of simpler ways to do things than other people in the film, who are attached to technology.
The images are cloudy, which puts the character in a dreamlike setting.
"We like that kind of somber feel to the images," Robert said. "That melancholy quality of a cloudy day. The light is very soft; you don't know what time period it is or even locale, but there's this brewing foreboding quality to it. It's cold and cloudy and kind of rainy, almost twilight."
He said the photographs are meant to hit the viewer emotionally, and then have it move into the intellect.
"In this day and age, we're just overwhelmed with media or various things," he said. "We still need to be touched in a certain way through the emotions, and that reaction is something we're interested in."
Shana agreed.
"If I think about the artwork or theater work or dance work that I am drawn to, I am drawn to it because it hits me in the gut," she said. "It hits me on such a level that initially there's no way for my brain to catch up. That's the kind of work that stays with you."
