Solo Show: Mikaylah Bowman

A Conversation with Mikaylah Bowman by Grant Willing

I have always enjoyed how your work seems to continue building upon itself and grow as a body with each new image you create. Can you tell me a little bit about your working process and how you continue to push your work?

The process is fairly simple. I am usually sitting on three separate ideas. I have to decide which one to begin with first. It takes two to three weeks to acquire the materials, usually for financial reasons. Then I set aside a morning or night to set up, make amendments to the set up over the next couple of days while deciding how to take the photos, and then take them. There is a lot of borrowing of ladders, tools, drills, making friends help me get things like huge tree stumps into cars etc. I owe a lot people a lot of favors. This process is very different when taking photographs outdoors. It is, forcibly, a lot more spontaneous. I have to do significant editing of objects while packing because most of them usually prove to be impractical for hikes.

Can you talk a little bit about the materials you use in your photographs? There is a unique repetition of subjects like white powder, black paint/dye, and black plastic backgrounds; are these things integral to your work or are they props that help you convey an overall feeling?

This is difficult to answer because I don’t know how capable I am of answering directly, knowingly. I know that certain objects are used to satiate something very visceral. Half from memories before the age of ten, especially relating to baby powder, paint, trash bags or liquids coming out of the ears or mouth. These were common themes a lot while growing up, alone in my neighborhood. Constantly being in gross apartments and trailers. I haven’t figured it out yet, but now I think I am making attempts at taking pieces of people and places I’ve encountered. The memories are young, fairly implacable, so I am helping myself to reconstruct the feelings attached. On the other hand, I think other objects are part of a less conscious intertextualization that I’m still trying to understand, attempting to make it more unified. I’ll read part of a book, get arrested by the use of an object and seek it out. Though, it is usually less straightforward than this. A lot of the time I can’t figure out what the hell I was thinking about until I see the actual photograph. Filling in the gaps afterward, working backwards.

While some of your images are literally self-portraits, much of your work focuses on other subjects but seems to have the same sensibility of a self-portrait in a more metaphorical way. Do you see your work as self-portraiture?

Self portraits are rarely, if ever, a deliberate choice. Taken more often than not out of necessity. It’s understandable that most friends would rather not be covered in paint, have hog intestines draped over their shoulders or lay in a tub of twelve gallons of freezing milk. I’m very shy about new ideas and very rarely understand where they are coming from or why I have the compulsion to unite a group of objects/movements. Thus, models involved are usually limited to the people I’m closest to.

It is very important for me to take photographs of my two most common subjects outside of myself, Ariel and Julia. Every photo of them is an attempt to add to a growing fossilization, to keep preserving them. They are a huge part of the creative process during the time the photographs are being taken. Just by being there they will often change my mind and the direction of the day. I don’t think I would have ever wanted or had any reason to take photographs without them.

For some reason your work feels like it is distinctly non-photographically inspired, which is nice. Is this true? What kinds of things do you use for inspiration?

This is very true. I am first and foremost, heavily influenced by films. After that I would say it’s a combination of literary excerpts and memories. I want my photographs to appear like a film-still might, to give the impression or the illusion of a series of movements occurring outside of that one frame. In my experience, photography feels infinitely more comfortable, mysterious and simple in this way. Creating sequences of movement that still manage to harness the same force and feeling is such a complex thing to execute properly. I think probably because of the involvement of dialogue and audio, because those must be strong singularly, extraneous of the visuals. I haven’t even gotten close with the visuals yet. So, I have so much respect for people who can do this.

My photographs feel incoherent like a half-thought.

Do you tend to work in series or more in singular images? Where do you see your work going in the future? Do you have any big plans coming up?

Each idea for a photograph usually happens when I am spacing out, remembering. I don’t want to elevate them or give them too much credit because, honestly, there’s not too much going on here. I don’t think I tend to think of them as an addition to any of the other photographs, although there is an obvious repetition happening and they are very closely related. Certainly, singular images.

I shot a short film over the summer and fall of 2009 on Super 8mm. I finished editing but am now taking up the endeavor of recording the soundtrack. I want to create each sound, this means, recording sounds of singing sands, wet clay, militaristic screaming, a face being pushed underwater, a rock being moved etc. etc. I am anxious about it because my goal is to create a separate piece with the sounds. A collection that endures on its own. We’ll see. I also recently began doing some minimal performance and recording work with two Breathing Problem Productions projects (Breathing Problem and White Dog). Shitty vocals, collecting naturalistic sound clips. A going back and forth between structure and improvisation. Releases should be underway from both projects in the future.