WINk Magazine

WINk magazine is a unique photography publication that strives to showcase "the most striking, innovative and moving images" they can find. They recently featured the photography of Doug Fogelson on their blog. Read the review below or online.

Doug Fogelson’s Multiple Exposures

In inspiration on August 19, 2009 at 12:53 pm

Doug Fogelson refers to his recent work in the book The Time After as “soft activism.” By employing multiple exposures, he creates images that are illusory, contradictory and startling. His intention is to convey the complex human relationship to nature, underlining the reverence for the natural form. By layering images of individuals, clouds, sky, ocean, deserts and architecture, he explores the relationship of cyclical time, of people to their natural as well as artificial environment and, ultimately, the transience of human existence.

In an interview with Photo District News, Fogelson claims that his work is “about different time signatures…seasonal time, cosmic time and human time, and within each of the exposures, where they’re overlapped, you’ve got different time signatures as well.”

The innovative technique of in-camera overlapping was something that began to fascinate Fogelson early on as he explored non traditional processes. Inspired by the styles of individuals such as Harry Callahan and Barbara Crane, Fogelson began experimenting with a medium-format rangefinder camera equipped with a winder that is disconnected from the shutter, hence allowing him to control the aperture and shutter speed. Layering images in different locations, with different vantage points, creates a unique sense of motion and transience that gives his photography the “soft activism” that he intends.

Though his message is intrinsically linked with that of environmental concern, Fogelson’s work sets itself apart in that it doesn’t expose the devastating effects of mankind on the planet but rather sets the spotlight on the purity of nature. Particularly through the technique of double exposure, Fogelson hopes to make his audience “suspend disbelief [and see] that they’re not just seeing a flat thing, but looking at, remembering, or feeling the subject.” He hopes that by juxtaposing the urban with the natural as well as accompanying the images with the writings in The Time After he will be able to convey the “larger perspective” of human destruction.

—Polina Myagkov