This is the story of a journey, a true struggle to live, one never letting go under any circumstance of the passion that drives the soul. Like many of us, Kurt Weston had high hopes and aspirations to pursue the career of his dreams; photography. Life, however offered him several other options.

He was encouraged by his parents to strive for a career of a more practical means. Thus he briefly compromised his passion for photography and began a successful, well-paid vocation in fashion merchandising. However his profession in the industry did not bring him any sense of enlightenment, or encouragement to continue. Weston went back to school to pursue photography. He took his knowledge of fashion incorporation with his love of photography and began a successful career in fashion photography. His work took him throughout Europe, working with many of the leaders in the industry.

Life began to move quickly post graduation, it was as though everything was falling into place. Weston, however gradually began to feel very ill, coughing deeply, his doctor recommended he come back in a week. A week passed, he could hardly walk, Weston had pneumonia, and simultaneously was diagnosed with Aids. Doctors claimed he would not make it out of the hospital alive. Weston claims he “miraculously survived”.

He gradually went back to his high power, energy driven career upon recovering, never telling those he worked with about his condition, “I felt like crawling in a corner”, fatigued from his medication, he continued persevere through.  It was only a deep physical struggle but emotional time for Weston.

After his third case of pneumonia, Weston went on disability. The Aids disease began to heavily affect his sight, gradually going completely blind in his left eye and partially blind in his right eye. Weston was told his vision would never come back, his sole focus was to stay alive.

As treatment for Aids began to improve, Weston began to take an active initiative to live his life.  He went to the Braille Institute and learned of the many tools to facilitate daily living for his impaired vision. He applied this knowledge to his life’s passion for photography. Through digital magnification, monocles, and highly prescriptive glasses, Weston began to gain a view of his limited peripheral vision  in his right eye.  He claims his vision permits him to see the world much like it appears in an impressionistic painting, only seeing glimpses of color.

“Seeing, as we all know is a combination of all our physical, mental, psychological and spiritual states. We speak about ‘seeing’ something clearly as seeing something accurately, truthfully and in its entirety” declares Weston.

Weston’s first project upon his return to photography were black and white images depicting his physical struggle through blind vision. The photographs were exhibited at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. This mere exhibit is an exemplification of Weston’s perseverance in life. He could have never taken another photograph, accepted his disability of vision. However his deep passion for the art only intensified with his illness. I believe it is this pursuit of passion that has kept him alive and well. The success of the show gave him further confidence to continue in his art and pursue an MFA at California State University Fullerton, which he completed in 2008.

Recently Weston was diagnosed with a rare cancer, which he claimed has few survivors.  Upon this announcement, Weston took a deep shift in his artwork. He began to focus on nature focusing on its colors and energies as a “rehabilitative power” he claims. Many often overlook natures various wonders, its numerous details for the aesthetic pleasure of the viewer. Weston takes these beautiful details many walk past, and captures them through his lens. His images have a modern day expressionistic quality to them, with textural elements exemplified through the depth of the colors.

Weston used an automatic lens for his photographs in the exhibit. The colors are heightened, and highly saturated. He was fascinated by frequency, and how certain species respond only to certain frequencies that the human ear cannot  even hear. He incorporated this concept of frequency through the use of color in editing his photographs. Through the use of digital magnification, Weston used Photoshop to further enhance the frequency of the colors.

An up-close perspective gives his body of work a whole new perception, every detail is further heightened, making one appreciate the beauties of nature. Certain images were blurred intentionally by Weston to give the viewer a look into his perspective, many claim they hold a deep impressionistic quality to them. Weston agrees, however living each and everyday with his blurred vision is not as pleasurable as he presents it in his exhibit. The viewer is able to shift focus between that of Weston’s and their perspective view, were as Weston cannot.

Weston’s photographs evoke a bright luminescence,  as though one is closing one’s eyes on a spring day looking up to the sun, as a gentle breeze sways the branches of the tree above.  In many instances the various geometric qualities of color hold an exceedingly similar effect of light passing through stained glass. Weston spoke of his works as though symphonic works of art, such as Debussy. The classical calmness of music is as though the view of nature, “it is as though nature composes its own symphonic ballad of calmness”, Weston claimed.

Kurt Weston an individual whose life thus far has presented him with more physical struggles than many endure in their lifetime, regardless he continues to persevere through with an immensely strong soul, focused on his rehabilitative power of passion; photography.

If you are interested in learning more about photography, Kurt Weston you can check out his website at http://www.kurtweston.com/

Lamia Larkin: Please tell us more about yourself, your background, education and what you do as an artist.

Chris Richmond: I will graduate from Chapman University in 2009 with a bachelor of fine arts in cinematography and a minor degree in studio art. In addition to my work as a cinematographer, I have an active practice in installation, performance, photography, video, and conceptual art. My work has appeared in seven shows at Chapman University’s Guggenheim Gallery and I will have his first solo show this June at Vienna’s C17 Gallery featuring old work and a new video installation. In spring 2008 I was awarded Chapman University’s Faculty Sponsored Student Grant and Best Junior Show for his mixed media work, This Is Institutionalized Space. In winter 2008, two of my performances, Chasing the Horizon and Painting the Sky Blue, were selected for Germany’s Szpilman Award.

As an artist, I am concerned with the postmodernist’s semiotic analysis of the information age – the study of signs and symbols by theorists like Michel Foucault, Hal Foster, Jean-François Lyotard, and Fredric Jameson, examining how meaning is interpreted and understood.  This interest has led me to a similar inquiry of the tangible world and the everyday object.     Employing photography, video, and performance, I invite the viewer to explore his encounters with various phenomena and to facilitate a dialogue around unobserved associations within everyday experience normally overlooked as points of artistic inquiry.

LL: Do you consider yourself an artist? If so what do you think classifies as a real artist.

CR: I hope so. I think Kosuth did a good job encapsulating the premise of art in 1969. “The ‘value’ of particular artists after Duchamp can be weighed according to how much they questioned the nature of art.”  Modern art is essentially self-reflective: its intention is to interrogate what art is, to define the concept of art.  It is no longer a question of producing beautiful objects, but of producing questionable or problematic ones. I am interested in reception and perception—enacting a loss of control in the world. My practice is a consequence of what the work does in the world.

LL: How long have you been creating art?

CR: Since my first word. I believe it was “duck.”

LL: Where do you get your daily inspiration from?

CR: I derive much of my inspiration from philosophy and art. I read books and journals by authors like Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Hal Foster, Jean-François Lyotard, Fredric Jameson, Georges Bataille and even Walt Witman and Antoine de Saint Exupéry. I also look at art. Recently I have spent a lot of time looking at work by artists like Bas Jan Ader, James Benning, Thomas Struth, Sharon Lockhart, and Manfred Menz. Everything else is chance: I trip on a stranger’s shoelace and fall over on the ground. When I look up, I see mystic truth next to a stray cat hiding from the sun underneath the hood of a turquoise sedan.

LL: Who are your top three biggest influences?

CR: Roni Horn, Hans Peter Feldman, Felix Gonzales Torres, Ray Charles, and an ever-expanding list.  Usually when I look at these artists though, I don’t feel like they influence as much as they give you permission to do something.

LL: Who is your target audience?

CR: Everyone. Especially humans. My work relates to anyone looking for answers. When we find answers though, we only find more questions.  This is my point of departure. My work is accessible as long as the viewer is willing to hear a question that will only generate more questions. I don’t make answers. I don’t think they exist.

LL: How would you describe your art to people?

CR: My most recent work, titled As Far As Opening Mail is Concerned, was a four-year project.  After I moved into a new apartment, I began to receive letters addressed to previous occupants. As initially conceived, the project was to be about these letters as displaced objects and signifiers for the knowledge and information concealed within.  Legally I could not open nor keep the letters, so I photographed them and sent them back to the sender.  As I continued, however, I began to see that it made sense to think about other objects, including some photographs I made, in a similar fashion.

Combined with the letters, appropriated images, and images of my father, I created fragments of what were otherwise unknown worlds. Materially, the work consists of photographs, yet the real subject of this project was the way that these palpable, material objects convey what is unknown and intangible.  Together these images actively function and engage the viewer by means of juxtaposition, fragmentations, sequences and implications, incorporating structures of interruption and montage.

The images of this project are displayed as a loose grid filled with gaps and varying size prints, to reflect the complexity of awareness and the nature of existence without signifiers to place them in context. The photographs in this work are not windows into a known world—a souvenir of an exotic land, the face of a lover, a landscape, or a documentation of objects. Rather, the content of this work is like the knowledge concealed in the letters, and is not based upon any concrete information that is known. The meaning lies in the recesses of the photograph.
In another work, Chasing the Horizon (#2), I chased the horizon until the sun set and the horizon was obscured by night and no longer visible. My objective in this performance was to chase the sun, so that it never set. This work can be viewed as both rational and illogical, and challenges the viewer to question and critically discuss phenomenological conditions central to one’s experience of time—a phenomenon linked to the movement of the sun.

LL: What does a typical day of work look like for you?

CR: It takes me a while to work through the development of a piece.  I do a lot of research and photography.  I can’t draw and I can’t sketch, so I take photographs.  Sometimes the work ends in photographs, but sometimes it doesn’t.  I spend hours processing film and looking through film.  Sometimes I end hear, sometimes this leads to large format, and sometimes this leads to performance, video, installation, or text.

LL: What are your favorite tools of the trade?  Mediums, supplies, software, etc.

CR: My Mamiya RZ67.  This is my workhorse camera.  This comes with me everywhere I go.

LL: What is the biggest piece of advice you would give to an artist that’s just starting out?

CR: I can’t answer this question. I’m still asking others.

LL: Finally, where can we see your work?

CR: I’m still trying to tame this Internet contraption. I will have a website up soon, but in the meantime you can see my work that was selected for the shortlist for Germany’s Szpilman Award (www.award.szpilman.de/best08.html). I’m also always willing to do an open studio for anyone interested. You can contact me via e-mail: cyrichmond@gmail.com.