I was fortunate enough to have an opportunity to chat with collaborative artists, Walter and Zoniel recently. They work together using alternative processes to create images which are both conceptual and representative.

Here, saltwater prints are made with the actual sea water in the image:

https://walterandzoniel.weebly.com/the-nature-of-interdependence.html

Here, photographs of chairs burning in the darkest forests are printed on material which is created by pulping down the burnt chairs and turning it into paper. The light of the fire which illuminated the darkest forests where the images were made is truly captured in the print.

https://walterandzoniel.weebly.com/life-with.html

The pair have been working together for several years and their collaboration seems to have emerged out of a genuine relationship with came about organically. Their work is therefore uncompromised by any form of ‘blind-date’, contrived or engineered collaboration, the likes of which I’m beginning to have my doubts about. Collaboration is fashionable nowadays, but perhaps only as we admit that this is probably how many people always worked. I wonder if the couple would have been described as Walter AND Zoniel had they been making work in the same way at the beginning of last century.

It was interesting to hear from both of them separately. Walter was so enthusiastic as he described his journey from physics-major to artist, as he became obsessed with alternative processes. Initially, he had to write to the Eastman Gallery and ask for the collodion recipes as it wasn’t possible to obtain it ready-made here in the UK. (I suspect he may have had to play around with them too as chemicals react differently in different environments.) Mark Osterman and France Scully Osterman, the resident Kodak Eastman alternative process experts, who I have done a course with, gladly helped them. I think I recall them telling us about Walter, and there were apparently a few disagreements about what might be possible. When Walter suggested making large prints, they said it couldn’t be done as there were no big enough cameras, so he made one! There was a portable replica of his original construction at the venue and I was able to walk around inside it. Quite the opposite to our phones!

It was a good opportunity for me to think about the relationship between physics, material, and the digital, quantum world. I am, for now, firmly invested in the digital and committed to it – for me exploring the tensions between these different points is far more interesting than any regressive, romanticising about old processes – but I didn’t get that sense from the couple at all. They just seemed to be having the most fun. Their work was very beautiful and worth seeing when the opportunity arises.