Beach, 2015 © Charlie Kitchen
In the introductory essay to Charlotte Cotton’s 2015 anthology Photography is Magic, she argues that photography’s current “moment” has broken free from analog nostalgia in a move to use photographic tools – digital or otherwise – with a newfound sense of freedom. This “freedom,” embraced by photographers who came up under the spectre of digital-ness often rests on open and continuous experimentation. San Antonio-based photographer Charlie Kitchen’s – Standard View (2015) and Recent Work (2016) builds on this idea through a series of in-camera collages that weigh trial, errors, and tactility over highfalutin conceptualism. “After shooting my thesis with a 4x5 camera,” says Kitchen, “photography began to unravel itself and I began to dig deeper into the medium, rather than contemplating what I could shoot to convey any sort of feeling or concept.” While skeptics might see this as avoiding conceptual responsibility, it’s a practice that has allowed Kitchen, like many photographers today, to unearth photography’s many tools for expanding visual possibility.
