Michael Marshall
artist, photographer, educator, physicist, platinum printer, creative ornithologist, gardener, digital image maker, illusionist, natural historian, cartographer, wood worker, yogi, encaustic painter, associate professor

Michael Marshall is an artist from Athens, Georgia. His recent projects have spanned from explorations of the spiritual landscape to natural history museums.  Originally from Ohio, he studied the craft of photography at the Maine Photographic Workshops and completed an MFA degree at Arizona State University where he worked with Mark Klett on the Third View Project. He is currently Chair of the Photography Department at the University of Georgia.

Gallery Statement

I am captivated by the age-old schisms of Western thought sometimes known as the Cartesian split.  It is that collision of paradigms between faith and empiricism, logic and intuition, embodiments of the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Science attempts to define that which I do not understand, solid ground for my uncertainties. It is through a science degree and an understanding of the physical world that I first sought a relationship with my surroundings. But the world seems no less full of mystery and magic because of it. My perceptions, and hence my images, often function more like faith, only to point a finger at ineffable experience and mystery.

Research Summary

Over the past six years my work has fallen into three distinct projects: Third View, a collaborative project exploring the western landscape; Spirit Places, a series of platinum prints exploring the experience of place; and Natural Histories, a portfolio of color assemblages crossing the boundaries between science and personal experience.

The Third View Project is a collaborative project resulting in a contemporary survey of the American western landscape. The project builds off the Rephotographic Survey Project of the 1970’s, which visited the sites of 19th century photographs by expeditionary photographers such as Timothy O’Sullivan and William Henry Jackson. In this project these sites are revisited for a third time, baring witness to the dynamic changes that have occurred over the past 30 years. The resulting book and exhibition reveal these changes not only through rephotography, but also an expanded investigation through audio and video recordings, journaling, and individual photographs by the team members. The material is also assembled in an interactive DVD that accompanies the book.

Spirit Places is a portfolio expressing the experience of place. The landscapes in this portfolio range from an abandoned drive-in movie theater in Louisiana, to a monastery in Italy. They function as a collection of artifacts, evidence not of specific location but a mimicking of the sensibilities of memory and intuition. This work utilizes the 19th century process of platinum printing and the visual language of timeworn glass plate negatives to imbue the sense of age, mystery, and hazy impressions of memory.

Natural Histories is a series of large color panels that explore the intersection of the investigative process of science and the left brained sensibilities of intuition and emotions. The imagery in this work comes from a wide range of sources: science and natural history museums, travels to foreign places, as well as old family photographs and my own back yard. The final works are composites between the iconography of scientific observation and the poetic narrative of personal experience embodied by the subjective sensibilities of emotion, intuition and mystery.