EUROPEAN MEDIA ART FESTIVAL OSNABRUECK 2011 - Emaf

Lawder gave his parents a list of equipment from Sears that he wanted for his birthday - trays, chemicals, a safe
light - and he took over a closet in the house for his darkroom. ›I remember my first print. It was a photograph
of Mom with our horse Little Man. It was very grainy, black-and-white, underexposed. But that's where it started.‹
Where Lawder really made his mark in the art world was with 16mm films, which he got into shooting while in
graduate school at Yale. Today, several of his films are in the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection. Of
these films he says, ›I don't script, write story boards, or conceive them full blown. I find a piece of film and wonder
what direction it wants to go in.‹
As the case with the film ›Necrology‹ (roll call of the dead). Shot in Grand Central Station, Lawder captured 12
minutes of anonymous commuters in their daily routines. Back in his studio, because he was too tired to rewind
the film, he simply watched it backwards and the concept was born. The effect of the finished film eerily shows
lines of people ascending and disappearing into a shadowy abyss. Lawder added a lengthy list of bogus credits
to the end for a touch of rather morbid humor that leaves viewers to ponder their own fate. ›Once I shot the
escalator, I thought, what was interesting about it? What are we looking at? What do we think we're looking at?
What the hell is going on? I'm interested in questions like that.‹
But as much as he loves film, Lawder doesn't teach it at the Denver Darkroom. He says it would be like teaching
an introduction to surgery course - it's just too complicated. ›You can't make films like Necrology anymore.
It was a throw away idea. That film cost me $ 182 to make in 1969. You could do that then: roll film, check out
an idea, and chase it,‹ he says. ›Today the cost is prohibitive. It's a dinosaur technology. The parade's gone by.‹
When asked why he doesn't shoot in digital format, Lawder says, slightly appalled, ›You're not making a film.
You're making a video. I like the projected image. I like the impact. You're sitting in a dark room bonded by everybody's
attention to this glowing rectangle on the screen. There's nothing else to look at. You make a pact with
it. You either sit it out or get up and leave. Video never interested me. It's illuminated furniture. Most of my films
could not have been made on video. Theoretically, maybe, yes. But they would not have evolved.‹
Bio
Standish D. Lawder is an artist whose subtle sense of humor delights in circumventing the more traditional notions
of audio visual media and catching his audience unaware. Born in New York City in 1936, Lawder received
his BA from Williams College in 1958, and his Ph.D. from Yale University 1967 for writing what is believed to be
the first doctorate ever awarded in art history on the subject of film. His dissertation examined the way various
art historical ›isms‹ - i.e., cubism, surrealism, dadaism, German expressionism, Soviet constructivism - are
manifested in certain films. His book, ›The Cubist Cinema‹, published by the New York University Press in 1975,
has been translated into several languages. The same year his work was included in ›A History of the American
Avant-Garde Cinema‹, a traveling film exhibition organized by the American Federation of Arts.
Standish Lawder has been making films, which range from the comic to the sublime (and are often both at once)
and other visual presentations for 30 years and he taught visual arts at Yale, Harvard and the University of California
at San Diego. He now lives in Denver, where he is running the Denver Darkroom he founded in 1996. The
Denver Darkroom is a non-profit teaching center for fine art photography. With classes and workshops ranging
from Digital Photo 101 to highly specialized workshops, Standish provides instruction in every level of photography
and every aspect of photographic art.
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