Image/Method: Danielle Ezzo
[Recursive transformation]

1. Could you briefly describe the conceptual process you follow in your work?

This image is from a series called Psychic Telephone, a collaboration with author Marin Sardy, where she interviewed seven people who believe they have psychic abilities. I use her text as source material for prompts to feed into a text-to-image AI generator to make AI images that I then use as conceptual jumping-off points to make camel-born photographs. Conceptually, the work plays with what we can see and know about the universe, and creativity as a gesture to the divine.

2. Is there a dynamic movement/shape/pattern or even rhythm that you are more drawn to in your visual thinking while working?

Again, this depends; I am flexible about listening to what the project needs and being flexible about my own approach. I am fascinated by what’s not seen in the photographic image, so much of my work is about trying to reveal the unseen or invisible.

I do this so that translation and recursion work together, though. I’m taking one material, be it photographic images from archives or written text, then alchemizing it into something else. Then, revisiting the original state of the material or going through the process again, to see what comes out.

3. Has the image(s) you have chosen here to share shifted your understanding or tapped into an area that was unknown to you? And if so, could you loosely link an idea with an imagistic aspect?

Yes, not just this image specifically, but the series as a whole. I’m very controlling of my process normally, and the act of collaboration (both with my Marin, as well as with technology) cracked up something useful in my process, allowing me to be more open to seeing different ideas visually and conceptually.

Part of what I’ve learned about my own way of working, and also what I struggle with, is feeling that I have fully conceptualized and visualized the art I make before I make it. The pre-cognitive process is so strong (my mind’s eye), that I see what I need to make beforehand, so much so that sometimes I never get out of this cerebral state. Much of my working process now is not theorizing or pre-visualizing too much beforehand. Getting just enough research to begin in the studio. Then, being ok with letting go of what I thought the outcome should be. Making art, for me, is not a thesis defense (not at first, at least), so I have to be willing to let go of everything I thought was working as a way of allowing myself to explore the terrain. I kind of have to trick myself into the “play” or “experimentation” of the physical work, so that I can leave for the unexpected.

With respect to this image, which is titled, “The Ever Day Portal”, it’s conceptually about this very idea. Through play, experimentation, and getting loose in the process of making (i.e., not always having a strict plan), I create room for new visual strategies to emerge that I wouldn’t have discovered if I had pre-planned the image. I call this “going in blind”.