{"id":35820,"date":"2018-02-05T08:43:42","date_gmt":"2018-02-05T14:43:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=35820"},"modified":"2023-11-15T21:40:48","modified_gmt":"2023-11-16T03:40:48","slug":"the-bigger-picture-simon-blundell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/the-bigger-picture-simon-blundell\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bigger Picture: Simon Blundell"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"Simon<\/a>

Simon Blundell, photo by Zo\u00eb Rodriguez<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

It\u2019s difficult to fathom a photographer naming an abstract artist as a major influence. O\u2019Keeffe and her desert flowers, maybe, but Rauschenberg and his mixed-media \u201cCombines\u201d? Really?<\/h4>\n

\u201cMy dad is an artist and printmaker,\u201d explains Simon Blundell,\u201d and we\u2019ve always had Rauschenberg\u2019s books around the house.\u201d<\/h4>\n

His father, Martin, was mentored by Robert Kleinschmidt at the U during the mid-\u201870s and is known for mixed-media collage drawings and paintings. (He\u2019ll be doing more of those now that he\u2019s retired; he and his two partners sold SDI, a large Salt Lake City screen-printing business, a couple weeks ago.)<\/h4>\n

You can map Rauschenberg\u2019s influence on Simon in\u00a0Fragmentation and Language<\/em>, a show of chromogenic prints of collaged images that race across the frames confining them: patchworks of color and motion, crazy-quilt photomontages of well-thought-out memory and meaning. They represent \u201csegments of my own experience,\u201d says Blundell. It\u2019s a fantastic, dreamy exhibition in a nearly perfect space for it, the fourth-floor Gallery at Library\u00a0Square in the Main Salt Lake City Library until Feb. 23.<\/h4>\n

It hangs nicely opposite a show of paintings by Rebecca Pyle, who emailed to say:\u201cSimon B.\u2019s photographs phenomenally beautiful. Rippling as if found memories\/objects underwater. The Comments book at the library is filling up with commentary about him.\u201d Blundell, clearly embarrassed upon hearing this but looking somewhat pleased, too, says he\u2019ll \u201cprobably\u201d go check out those comments \u201cone day soon.\u201d<\/h4>\n
\n
\"\u201cBetween<\/a>

\u201cBetween Art and Life,\u201d 32\u2033 x 18\u2033 Chromogenic print by Simon Blundell, edition of 11, Courtesy the artist.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The photographer also picked up an affinity for Bob Dylan through his father then took up the guitar, and though he still respects Dylan (\u201cHis lyrics are collages, he just mixes up these lovely visual images\u201d) says, \u201cI really love U2 now. In fact, they\u2019re my favorite band.\u201d Seemingly veering off subject, he proceeds to chat comfortably about the group\u2019s new album, \u201cSongs of Experience\u201d versus their most popular album \u201cThe Joshua Tree.\u201d<\/h4>\n

It seems U2\u2019s \u201cSongs of Experience\u201d really isn\u2019t that far off point, as photography (which Rauschenberg did, too) is \u201ca language that I use to describe my experience,\u201d Blundell writes in an artist statement. \u201cPhotography, like any language, has a grammar, syntax, and vocabulary. By manipulating the syntax and grammar of photography, I explore and express the concept of fragmentation,\u201d he says of his exhibition and its title. \u201cEach photograph is a piece of time and space. It is associated with and represents our memory. Photographs also become symbols of the real. We save and collect photographs in albums, boxes, and now on hard drives. We take photographs to help us remember. They are a way to document and record our lives. They help us reconnect to ourselves,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd share who we are.\u201d<\/h4>\n

In addition to working with both fine art and commercial clients, Blundell frequently shoots for 15 Bytes (see our recent artist profiles of Cody Chamberlain, Joe Carter, Bonnie Sucec and Bret Hanson \u2013 and much earlier images of the studios and smiling faces of Maureen O\u2019Hara Ure and Earl Jones as examples of Blundell brilliantly telling the other half of the story through his lens). He has shown his work at Bountiful Davis Art Center and elsewhere, currently has a video piece at UMOCA (he thinks adding a motion component may be a logical direction for his collage work to go) and is also an assistant professor, lecturer at the University of Utah where he\u2019s teaching three courses this semester in the areas of photography, design, and arts technology. That\u2019s where Blundell studied as an undergraduate and also earned an MFA in photography and digital imaging.<\/h4>\n
\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n
\u201cMercury and Solace\u201d<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n
\u201cTomorrow\u2019s Yesterday\u201d<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n
\u201cShelter From the Storm\u201d<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

He previously taught photography for five years at Utah Valley University in Orem, but finds he\u2019s much happier living in Sugar House near his two younger sisters and his two nieces and two nephews. He values spending time with family and with friends and also enjoys riding his Harley Sportster 1200 (a couple steps down from a big Hog but a lot of fun to drive, we gather), seeing films (he loved the new Blade Runner), hiking, fly fishing, cooking (when his mother isn\u2019t making excellent meals for him), snow boarding, and, of course, he\u2019s still playing that guitar.<\/h4>\n

Blundell, 43, was born in Salt Lake City and lived near the Capitol for a decade before the family moved to Bountiful where he eventually attended Woods Cross High. \u201cI grew up painting and drawing, but in high school I started fooling around with a camera and really wanted to be the Student Body Photographer but my editing skills weren\u2019t strong enough. I was able to help out, though, and later, when I just needed an elective near the end of high school \u2013 I was heavy into math and science because I thought I was going to be a plastic surgeon one day \u2013 a friend said we should take this photo class.\u201d They spent a lot of time goofing off, taking pictures with cheap rolls of film and his dad\u2019s old camera: \u201cIt was really pretty sweet, an old Canon 35 mm. I mostly used the 50 mm lens. It had a really wide aperture, F 1.2.\u201d He also had a wide-angle 35 mm lens and a telephoto 135 mm. \u201cI\u2019d wander around and take pictures of people and crows and whatever. I felt like the camera gave me a way of accessing the world. So that\u2019s where it took off photography-wise. I got a camera for graduation and started taking classes up at the U,\u201d Blundell remembers.<\/h4>\n

Today he uses a Canon 5 DS 50 megapixel digital body and uses a 24-70 lens, as well as a 40 mm lens for most of the work he captures, \u201cbut if I need a reconnection with film and my past will also still use an old Hasselblad that I shoot film with,\u201d says Blundell. \u201cAnd then I had a little Olympus XA that was a point and shoot and it had a 38 mm lens on it so it was kind of wide but not really distorted and so I would just run film through it and I loved it because it was a quiet and a simple little range finder.\u201d He returns to it every so often, and though he found a digital camera that had the same resolution in a small size, he\u2019s stuck with the Olympus. \u201cI realized I had to have the viewfinder. It was just the way I was taught. I even have problems with the phone. Someone will ask me to take their picture and I have trouble framing it because it\u2019s just the screen.\u201d<\/h4>\n
\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n
\u201cOver the Ocean\u201d<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n
\u201cDouble Exposure\u201d<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n
\u201cWhere All Is Forgiven\u201d<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

He has a large format 4\u00d75 that he\u2019ll sometimes shoot with. \u201cThere\u2019s some magic still to watching a print arrive in the developer in the darkroom. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s ever going to get old for me. It\u2019s awesome. And film makes you wait. I like that feeling of discovery,\u201d he says.<\/h4>\n

Blundell doesn\u2019t do a lot of landscape photography. \u201cThere always seems to be this Ansel Adams religion. It\u2019s like \u2018This is the perfect print.\u2019 And they are usually male and they love to talk about camera technology. Lenses and film \u2014 and I got so turned off by that. And it always seemed like these photographers never had their own voice or their own vision, it was just like they\u2019re a cover band that sings other people\u2019s songs and they\u2019re always trying to get that Ansel Adams image. I love Adams\u2019 work, but it\u2019s HIS vision. It\u2019s not anybody else\u2019s. So I think that kind of turned me off to the natural landscape,\u201d he says.<\/h4>\n

\u201cAnd I like the fluidity of the city. You walk through a city taking pictures and things are changing\u00a0all<\/em>\u00a0the time. There\u2019s not this epic huge shot that I wait for; and I think that\u2019s more of this landscape thing: you find the shot and wait for it, wait for the light and wait for the moment and take it. I like the speed and the quickness of the city.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Blundell says that he took a history of photography class from Joe Marotta at the U and he discovered \u201ckindred spirits\u201d in the \u201c35 mm range of photographers,\u201d the street photographers of the \u201860s like Andre Kertesz and Robert Frank. \u201cThat stuff really just resonated with me: The poetry of the moment; it\u2019s quick, it\u2019s small. I loved the idea of [Henri] Cartier-Bresson\u2019s \u2018decisive moment,\u2019 but then I look at, like, Robert Frank \u2014 to me it\u2019s the in-between moments. Bresson is, like, I\u2019ve got this great perfect shot where everything is lined up perfectly \u2014 and\u00a0I<\/em>\u00a0want to know what happened after that, in between those two big moments. And I think that\u2019s what Robert Frank captured for me. I responded to that, to that poetry,\u201d he says.<\/h4>\n
\n
\"\u201cRe-Framed<\/a>

\u201cRe-Framed Attachment,\u201d 32\u2033 x 18\u2033 Chromogenic print by Simon Blundell, edition of 11, Courtesy the artist.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

One work in the Library show, \u201cRe-Framed Attachment,\u201d is made up of eight or nine, or maybe more, images shot on the streets of New York City and seamlessly blended together, reflecting on the ephemeral nature of the city, as well as photography. There are buildings going up to the sky and people down to the ground, as Dylan might observe, and probably did. There are reflections on the window, so you see through it and on it, too. \u201cThe ad in the window is taken down with the next fashion season,\u201d says Blundell. \u201cExploring in New York I started seeing a lot of this.\u201d People seen through concrete girders on a subway platform look like images on a contact sheet, \u201clike analog photography. You never see all the things that get thrown away in the process.\u201d There\u2019s also the dichotomy of the female model, from a fashion shoot, and the male: He, of course, is a piece of sculpture from the Met that lasts forever. \u201cWhat\u2019s transitory and ephemeral? What do we hold on to? What do we get connected with? This is about how photography reframes things.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Blundell says his education came on the cusp between digital and analog. \u201cI was educated when digital was just kind of coming up.\u201d His montage images like \u201cRe-Framed Attachment\u201d actually came about from an analog mistake. \u201cI was at the university doing a project where I had to compare black and white and color and I had to load my camera with a slide roll of film and I would take a couple of pictures and I would rewind it and then reload it and I didn\u2019t have two camera bodies I only had one and so I\u2019d have to work with two different types of film and swap them out. I was rewinding film and in the process one had an accidental double exposure. I was editing those slides and my dad said, \u2018What\u2019s this one?\u2019 and I told him it was a mistake and he said, \u2018Well this is the best thing you\u2019ve ever done.\u2019\u201d He decided to turn to the digital to take advantage of this discovery. \u201cI was working with early Photoshop and I found there were simulations where we could actually stack images and simulate that double exposure because it was cheaper and I had more control over it. There\u2019s still this randomness when these two images come together but I had the computer to see quickly what those results were. Not only what happens when you put two images, three images together in one single frame, but the ability to branch out from that and rearrange the scale of the film, I could blow it up or mask out parts. That turned into my MFA.\u201d<\/h4>\n
\n
\"\u201cUncertainty<\/a>

\u201cUncertainty of Knowing,\u201d 32\u2033 x 18\u2033 Chromogenic print by Simon Blundell, edition of 11, Courtesy the artist.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

What Blundell finds interesting is that because of that process in the computer, it\u2019s not just photography. Though Photoshop is spoken of as photo-related software, he says \u201cit\u2019s built more about painting. I mean all of its tools are on brushes and palettes and its main format is called a canvas; I mean those are painting terms. So a lot of times the materials that I\u2019m using are like paint that you start throwing on a canvas and start rearranging and pushing around. I can change the color and all sorts of things. But it\u2019s the assembly of how I\u2019m putting the images together that\u2019s a lot more in congruence with a painter\u2019s process. The idea of Motherwell saying let\u2019s make a mark on the canvas, react to it, make another one. In a similar way, here is a photo, what is it saying. I guess the difference is photography has such a connection to the real denotative meaning, but then there\u2019s all this personal meaning or cultural meaning, and those then can get collaged. So as soon as I throw another image to that you start to have dialogue and those meanings collide or interact both in a real literal sense or culturally and personally. Now I can create layers of possible meaning.\u201d<\/h4>\n

And then he\u2019s off. \u201cThat image needs some blue, but is it a wall, or the ocean or sky or what?\u201d And he goes to his archive of images and searches until he finds something that he thinks will work and tries it out. Or if he doesn\u2019t have the image he makes it. He might plan a trip to the ocean to get the image he needs \u2013 he\u2019s planning one this summer. He\u2019ll show his students his technique, but they have to discover on their own, as artists, how to put two images together and why. He doesn\u2019t see anyone else doing what he\u2019s doing. \u201cI think my style is mine. I\u2019m blessed in that sense. Avedon said that every photograph is accurate but none of them are true. Maybe that\u2019s pushed even further now that Photoshop is part of our culture,\u201d Blundell says with a smile.<\/h4>\n
\n
\"\u201cCollection<\/a>

\u201cCollection of Guiding Light, 32\u2033 x 18\u201d Chromogenic print by Simon Blundell, edition of 11, Courtesy the artist.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

A piece in the library show, \u201cCollection of Guiding Light,\u201d that he thought might inspire kids as they walked by, is of a room in the library, camera angled down four or five floors, collaged with bookshelves and a table holding a stack of books \u201cthat they could check out if they wanted to,\u201d says Blundell. \u201cI was remembering one of my first assignments was shooting neon signs on State Street. I found Walker Evans on my teacher\u2019s recommendation and looked at how he was photographing signage in the \u201830s. I loved the idea that I could look up this reference, this \u2018go look at so-and-so.\u2019 And I still love art books. So I photographed some of my favorites.\u201d Robert Frank\u2019s\u00a0The Americans<\/em>\u00a0has a photo from Utah in it, and is open to that page. But not all the books can be checked out because Blundell added some of his own books that inspired him. \u201cMore Robert Frank. David Hockney was a great inspiration. More Rauschenberg, Irving Penn, and Anton Corbijn, who was U2\u2019s photographer and also was inspired by Irving Penn and Robert Frank. I like his graphic quality and portraiture.\u201d<\/h4>\n
\n
\"Simon<\/a>

Simon Blundell, photo by Zoe Rodriguez<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Blundell sees everything in terms of photography. Thinks it. That\u2019s what happens, he says. \u201cI see it in all those bits and pieces. And the bits and pieces then speak to the whole. Maybe it\u2019s a struggle of trying to figure out who we are and why we\u2019re here on this planet, why we\u2019re going through this human experience. You know, what does it all mean? These BIG, big questions. And then you wonder, \u2018What the hell was this little thing, why did I have to go through THAT?\u2019 And then over time you start to relate it to all these other experiences and you realize it makes sense.<\/h4>\n

\u201cI wonder if that\u2019s some part of collage work for me. I might be looking at one single image and then as I get further back it turns into a bigger picture and I get a better view of what\u2019s happening and over the scope of a lifetime I start to relate and say \u2018Oh, yeah these are consistent\u2019 and it starts giving me greater understanding of who I am and what\u2019s important to me in my life. There\u2019s a lot of self-discovery that occurs through the image making,\u201d Blundell concludes.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Fragmentation and Language: Digital Montage by Simon Blundell,\u00a0<\/em>Gallery at Library Square<\/a>, Main Library, Salt Lake City, until Feb. 23,\u00a0simonfoto.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s difficult to fathom a photographer naming an abstract artist as a major influence. O\u2019Keeffe and her desert flowers, maybe, but Rauschenberg and his mixed-media \u201cCombines\u201d? Really? \u201cMy dad is an artist and printmaker,\u201d explains Simon Blundell,\u201d and we\u2019ve always had Rauschenberg\u2019s books around the house.\u201d His father, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":844,"featured_media":37166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,14],"tags":[2970],"class_list":["post-35820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artist_profiles","category-visual_arts","tag-simon-blundell"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/simon3-1.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-06 04:31:19","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/844"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35820"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71567,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35820\/revisions\/71567"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}