APA LA with Eric O’Connell

© Eric O'Connell

Eric O’Connell Photographer, Anthropologist, Educator

Whether investigating artists with a pinhole camera, or cowboys in the former East Germany with 4x5 field camera, or hidden behaviors in public spaces with a digital camera, Eric is interested in the how and the why people do what they do, and how they present themselves in the context of the cultural and social landscape in which they inhabit.

The camera captures a point in time, in the fraction of a second, creating an artifact—the photographic print—a piece of history. Working with a pinhole camera presents a new temporal meaning in this history, in that it lengthens the time. The nature of working with pinhole compresses more history into the single frame, lengthening it and paradoxically compressing it into a single form, or image. In the work presented here—portraits of artists—the pinhole camera serves as metaphor. A dark box; the artist's mind. A speck of light; the genesis of an idea. Inside the box, the artist moves towards a metaphorical light, or creation, of an idea. The print is a mirror where artists are seen in connection with the spaces that inspire them, and the work that defines them.

The long exposures required in pinhole photography (some up to 35 minutes) often allows the artists the opportunity to interact with those spaces and with the works that define them while the exposure is being made. All the while a conversation between Eric and the artist is being had, and movement in and through the scene is taking place. Time is marching on, and being recorded (compressed) into a single frame and lengthened moment.

People, culture, landscape and the influences and combinations thereof as a created concept are what inform this work. Culture can be seen located in the constructed landscape and as something that guides social behaviors. Visual queues, manifested in the ways people look, and in the things they create, reflect how they look back at themselves. Artists themselves are offering a temporal reflection of society through their works of art.

As a visual-cultural anthropologist by training, Eric is interested in what he sees as a cultural landscape. How people look at themselves and reify that knowledge in the realm of display and creation of subcultures, art and cultural performance. For him, culture creates landscapes and in tern, landscapes redefine culture. In this sense, the term ‘landscape’ gives agency to the created cultural space, such as an artist’s place of work.

PARKING: $10 Parking at Pico and 14th
UBER recommended: First time riders use promo code: 5ja4g and save.

Please note: Please arrive 1 hour early to allow for street parking on meters or empty spots. The College has evening classes at the same time, arriving early does not guarantee free parking.
Public transportation plan your trip here: Big Blue Bus