Between Heaven and Here with Osheen Harruthoonyan

Photography has long opened its doors to abstraction, impressionism, and any number of imported refinements from other mediums. It has, in turn, enhanced and stimulated other mediums, such as painting and even music. The captured image; both still and moving, has continued to penetrate our culture and psychology in ways with which we can hardly keep up. We dream of pictures dreamed by others.

Innovation and a unique approach are more and more rarified. As our photographic tools become ever expanded upon, our quest to innovate and remain personal can also stall. This is not the case with Osheen Harruthoonyan.

Such a singular approach and enchanting process need little elaboration once the viewer has digested the work. It is also perhaps best left a bit mysterious, as too much projecting upon it would be a disservice to the poetry. For this reason, I have let the images do the talking for the most part with this interview.

Osheen was kind enough to let us into his world.

Hi Osheen,

Thank you for taking the time.

Your work is like very little else. There is, of course, the recent history of working with emulsion and of re-embracing the tactile and material dimension of photography. Less common these days is the depth of hands-on work in which you engage.

JR: Can you elaborate for us a little on how your process emerged, or track where it started? Can you provide a history of your evolution as an artist?

OH: I used to take these terrible colour photos in 35mm, and I wasn’t happy with the types of printing I had access to at the time, or how I could manipulate the negatives. Now, things are very different, and I am quite excited to work on a colour series! Black and white for me is also very nostalgic, dramatic and further removed from reality. It elicits very different emotional reactions than colour work in my opinion. 10-11 years ago, I was looking for ways to manipulate film emulsion and experimented with a variety of tools and methods. I wanted a process that would give me a lot of control over manipulating my negatives, and at the same time, the ability to create a very specific atmosphere that would allow me to tell the types of stories I wanted to.

JR: Your themes seem both cosmic and earthly, appearing to me as if they are eclipsing dimensions into one another. What are your images of ? How would you summarize your subject matter?

OH: I like to say that I photograph the moments between moments. The Mayan’s speak about God’s breath, that split second of pause before breathing in or out. I like this idea of an in-between state, where more than one possibility can exist. There is a very beautiful tension there, that transition point where shapes take their form. I create this tension with composition, a lot of negative space, texture and deep blacks.
Some of the imagery is created in the studio, directly on the negative, while others are photographed on location (sometimes even attaching my 35mm camera to telescopes, with scientists screaming why on earth I would want to use such dated tech!)

JR: Can you tell us a little about your studio practice? Be as technical as you are willing.

OH: I have a few cameras I shoot my B+W work with. My Graflex, Hasselblad, and Canon F-1 with a 28mm lens. Film stocks range from Ilford FP4 and 5, Fuji Acros or Kodak Tri-x. After processing my negatives in Sprint chemistry, I use a variety of tools to manipulate my negatives slowly. This process can take a couple of days to a couple of months. I lift emulsion off of celluloid, layer, collate and set back down. I feel that removing integral pieces of an image encourages viewers to focus on atmosphere, space, and feeling. The final negatives are then exposed onto fiber based photo paper in limited editions and split toned with either sepia/selenium or sepia, gold and selenium. I really love printing, it ’s one of the most meditative things I do.

https://luminous-landscape.wistia.com/medias/iqab8cvp46?embedType=async&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=0

The Luminous Landscape thanks Osheen Harruthoonyan

Process photographs courtesy of Duncan McDowall / The CBC

Josh Reichmann

March 2019