Joseph Mougel

Silver Pixels

May 4 - July 5, 2018

No longer do we need to traverse mountain peaks or ford canyon rivers to know a place. Instead, our understanding of the land is expanded through archives of images and data, easily accessible, anywhere. Silver Pixels utilizes a 19th-century positive process to create new landscape imagery based on historical photographs of the American West, reinterpreted through satellite imagery and digital capture methodologies. Virtual topographical and pictorial sources cast their illuminating glow onto glass, making an old wet-plate process mimic a digital screen. The photographers who first documented the Western landscape carried their darkroom with them throughout their journeys; artists of today are largely relieved of this burden, with portable cameras that easily capture and store thousands of images. By returning to the process-oriented methodologies of the past, Silver Pixels spans the history of photographic imaging, with ambrotypes captured from altitudes and perspectives that were previously unachievable. Photographers have always carried their equipment out into the field; now we have the freedom to bring the world into the darkroom.

ABOUT THE ARTIST: After serving as a combat correspondent in the US Marine Corps, Joseph Mougel completed a BFA in studio art from the University of Georgia and a MFA in photography from the University of New Mexico, where he also studied video, performance, and interactive media. He participated in the field-based studio program Land Arts of the American West, and has created site-responsive work for residencies at Elsewhere Artists Collaborative, Ucross Foundation, and Iowa Lakeside Laboratory. His work is held in several public collections, including the Nevada Museum of Art, University of New Mexico Art Museum, and the New Mexico Museum of Art. Mougel is the head of the Photography & Imaging program at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. http://www.josephmougel.com/