Black-and-white landscapes and abstracts, shot on 4×5, 5×7, and 8×10 film. All developing and printing done by hand in the darkroom. Selected images from 1982–2009 are shown below.
Most of the digital collage work is made from 19th-century woodcuts and steel engravings. The goal was to produce images that, despite the number of pieces from disparate sources, look as if they were created by one person at one time. For example, “Monument Valley” was designed to look like a late 19th-century panoramic photograph with foxing.
All images © Walton Mendelson. All rights reserved.
In 1934, the photographer Frederick Sommer began making drawings in the manner of musical scores — graphic works that could, in principle, be played. He drew them for over sixty years, longer than he worked in any other medium. In 1967, at Prescott College where Sommer taught, Stephen Aldrich and I were invited to his house for dinner and asked to try one of the scores. We discovered they could be played. On May 9, 1968, we gave the first public performance of Sommer’s music at Prescott College.
Thirty years later, Aldrich and I recorded our interpretations on a CD, The Isles of Melancholy and Madness, released by Nazraeli Press in a limited edition portfolio with unbound color prints of the scores. The performances were recorded live, without editing or splicing.
“The music stands up to the best of 20th Century avant-garde composers like Philip Glass and Steve Reich. The minimalism of the music mirrors perfectly the tentative energy of these bedaubed compositions, resulting in a synaesthesia… Dramatic and romantic, it is also unobtrusive and mesmerizing. My comment is: bravo!”
— Kelly Everding, Rain Tree, Fall 2000The electronic wind instrument (EWI) is a clarinet-shaped controller with up to an eight-octave range. I play it in a repertoire drawn from blues, folk, and jazz.
Recordings coming soon.