Evan Hume
Images above from the series Viewing Distance
Michael Rippy (MR): The first thing I usually ask everybody is how did you first get interested in photography? Has it always been a part of what you've been doing, or did your work evolve in the direction of photography and what you're doing now?
Evan Hume (EH): I’ve always been interested in art. From a very young age, drawing was encouraged and was my biggest interest as a kid. I kept it up throughout school, and then sophomore year of high school, my friends were taking a black and white photography class. We had a darkroom in the high school. I wanted to just take on more art classes. I wanted to take as many art classes as I could, so I took that, and I realized it made me a better artist because it really slowed down my way of observing.
I think it made me a better drawer and illustrator because it was black and white photography, so I was able to see things in tones of gray and pay attention to things like light and shade. It made me really sensitive to those visual qualities. Then I just wanted to see what everything looked like as a photograph, what I could do with my camera to transform something. There was the magic of the darkroom too, of learning all the chemical processes and being able to handle the chemistry, the photo paper, and see the image appear in real time. I got hooked on those processes in high school and I wanted to go to an art school, major in some kind of art.
I grew up in the northern Virginia, DC area. In Richmond there’s VCU [Virginia Commonwealth University], a big art school. I decided I would go there for art school and kept on thinking I would stick with illustration or painting. There wasn’t a whole lot offered for photography in the foundations program at that time. I realized I really missed photography, and I got a little digital camera in my freshman year of college. I was making my own photographs on the side but didn’t have much of an opportunity to use them for my schoolwork. Then it came time at the end of my foundation year to apply for a concentration. I just thought, “I’m so burnt out on anatomy and figure drawing and still life, I miss photography.” I decided, “I’ll go for it. I’ll select photography as my top pick and see what happens.”
I got into the photo program, and that became my major. That was my introduction to things like DSLR cameras and Photoshop. I only had very basic knowledge of using a little Kodak point and shoot, my first digital camera, and we also had to learn medium format film, black and white, so that was new for me as well. Learning how to shoot and compose things in a square format. Because I was already so familiar with darkroom processes, I still latched on to that. I actually resisted digital for a while because Photoshop felt overwhelming.
I got really into alternative processes, medium-specific stuff work. I was interested in photograms and hands-on manipulation of prints and even negatives. That’s what caught my attention in undergrad. By junior year, I knew that I wanted to continue on to grad school. I had some professors who encouraged me to pursue that, and then I ended up at George Washington University.
MR: Before we get to grad school, who instilled this artistic endeavor that you had inside you? Was it something natural? Because when I was younger, I just always drifted towards drawing. Like you were saying, I lay around and drew pictures all the time, and it just happened. I’ve talked to other people who felt their parents had a big influence. Who was your big influencer to really getting into the arts so young and knowing that you wanted to explore all your options in high school?
EH: Part of it was being an only child and getting really good at entertaining myself or just being in my own creative world. I don’t know exactly where the impulse to start drawing came from, but my grandmother was always a really talented illustrator and painter. She did it as a creative outlet in her free time. My family already had an appreciation for art. I guess they thought my drawings were good for a four- or five-year-old and encouraged me to keep on doing it.
MR: It’s interesting that there are always some family members that are interested in art. I’ve never met a family that hasn’t had an aunt, an uncle, a grandmother, if not their own parents that have had this interest in art. It’s comforting as an artist knowing that even in a regular family, you have people that have an interest, even if it’s in their free time or just as a hobby, they’re entertaining this idea of art making. You went through the whole process of getting to grad school. You were doing traditional arts a lot in high school; you were doing black and white photography.
In undergrad you still continued to explore traditional camera work even though you did have some interest in and connection with digital tools. Then you get to grad school, and from the work that I’ve seen you make recently, it seems like you went the whole evolution of photography.
EH: Yes. I think that’s true. When I started grad school, I definitely still held on to some of those analog alternative-process ways of working, but I hit this dead end. I think a lot of people run into that in grad school their first year, where you get encouraged to expand your horizons and either really push what you’ve been working on or pursue a new direction. I kept up with these mostly camera-less ways of working, still mostly darkroom based throughout my first year. I did get a better handle on the basics of digital processes and Photoshop because I liked taking what I had done in the darkroom and then scanning it so that I could print it bigger and just do very minimal changes for color correction and contrast.
Wanting to work on a larger scale was probably my true introduction to working digitally because I did feel limited by what I could do in the darkroom. I tried exposing long rolls of paper in the darkroom and running those through developer and hanging them on the wall, or I would take those long rolls and partially develop them and not fix them, so they would change as they were exposed to light. With that, it was just very gradual steps towards digital. I was experimenting with scanning what I’d done in the darkroom and translating that digitally into something large.” Then I thought maybe I would pick up my camera again. Periodically, I would set up rules for myself. “I’ve done that for too long. Now pick up a camera again and see where that leads me.” I was feeling kind of lost that first year of grad school. I really wasn’t sure what I wanted to photograph. I would just take visual notes around my apartment or around my studio or the art building of little details I found interesting. As side interests, I always had the otherworldly, the paranormal, UFOs, and those types of things. There is this radio show, Coast to Coast AM, which covers those topics, and I would stay up late listening to it. I wondered if there’s some entry point for me to merge those interests with my artwork.”
My first year of grad school I took an arts journalism class, and we would go cover different events that were happening in the arts in DC. I heard that there was a UFO conference coming to town. I asked my professor, “Hey, if I apply for a press pass for this, can you vouch for me?” and he agreed to. So, I was granted a press pass for this event called X-Conference. It was a who’s who of people in the UFO community at the National Press Club for a weekend.
I came across this guy who had a table of DIY photo books. He was claiming that he was able to photograph these strange lights above the National Mall, Capitol building, and White House. It got me thinking about how photography has had this connection to the paranormal, whether it’s spirit photography in the 1800s or people claiming to have captured UFOs or anomalous phenomena on film. I thought, “Maybe that’s my connection to merge these two interests.”
I took some interesting pictures of the conference but never really felt confident as a documentary photographer. I wondered, “What if I can make my own UFO or paranormal photographs?” I took my medium format camera, and I’d go on the tops of buildings around campus and photograph the sky. I captured some interesting colors and cloud formations. I noticed that when I began scanning the film, I had all these unintentional scratches and dust on the images. If you didn’t know the marks were scratches or dust, they looked like these weird floating objects in the sky.
I made prints of those, and that was the beginning of merging my interest in abstraction, which was a lot of my work in alternative processes, and this interest in paranormal photography, which I felt hadn’t really been explored much from a fine art photographer perspective. That made me want to do more research on the history of UFO photography, because there’s a lot written about the UFO phenomenon in general, but not a whole lot about UFO photography, at least aesthetically. That led me to the National Archives, where I found files with photographs pertaining to alleged UFO sightings and I was amazed at how abstract they were.
These alleged UFO photographs were heavily abstracted black and white images that were either not that legible to begin with or had been photocopied so many times that they became illegible. They reminded me of abstract modernist painting, and so I wondered, “What if I can somehow get these files from the National Archives, sift through the most abstract and ambiguous ones, scan those, and blow them up to large scale so they operate visually like large abstract paintings would?” That set me on working in a more digital way but also tightening that connection between my visual art interests and other interests that had been outside of art before that.
MR: That’s been your focus now with your recent artwork, and then from that, you’ve been showing it, and then you got the show with Aperture. Talk about how that went and what the experience was like doing that show.
EH: The body of work that I ended up with for my thesis in grad school set me in that direction of working with archival images. Another important part of that way of working was that I had grown up in the DC area and was surrounded by all these government institutions and intelligence agencies. Everybody is hyperaware of the operations of government in that area. It’s just part of the culture. That had always intrigued me.
I remember just before my family moved to Virginia, there was a case of this CIA agent who had sold information to the Russians. There was an air of intrigue around the area that always captured my imagination. That was another reason why I kept pursuing declassified files, because the federal government is such a big part of the culture where I come from. I realized there was just this whole history of declassified images that had been overlooked or under-explored. As I kept researching, my parameters expanded to include more archival images from the Air Force, National Reconnaissance Office, CIA, and FBI.
Encountering images from those sources led me to think about how photography has been used to document experimental technological developments. How has photography been used for reconnaissance and surveillance, and how big of a role did the government have in funding and developing these great technological leaps forward in photography? Around 2018, I started experimenting with these images I’d collected over the years pertaining to photography’s use for surveillance and reconnaissance.
I had also become much more proficient with Photoshop over the years because of having to teach it. I had to really become well acquainted with it. As I continued my research, I began thinking about the ways that I had seen images transform during their time in the archive. Some of them looked like they had been scanned or photocopied poorly, or were heavily digitally compressed, or discolored. I allowed myself to open up a bit more and work in a more intuitive way where I would make digital collages using these images to make connections between the imagery.
By 2019, I had begun printing some of that work and submitting it to exhibitions. Then 2020 ended up being a busy year despite the pandemic. There was a show at Filter in Chicago called Context 2020. I had a couple of pieces from what became Viewing Distance in that show, and that’s what caught the attention of Daylight [Books]. Shortly after, I applied to Aperture’s open call for their summer exhibition that they do every year, and the topic seemed perfect. It was “Information”-based on the 1970 exhibition at MoMA featuring artists who use data and different forms of information in their practice.
I was lucky enough to be one of a dozen or so artists in the Aperture show, and even though it was during the pandemic and they couldn’t have a big opening, it was a great opportunity because it was at Fotografiska in New York. It definitely got attention just because of how many people follow Aperture.
MR: There’s also a renewed interest in the idea of UFOs and especially with the technology that’s coming out of different countries that some people may think is eclipsing what the United States is doing. Do you see this project evolving in another direction because of the renewed interest? It’s always been below the radar, always. I think in the last year or two, because of the release, the FOIA request to see more and more of this documentation, and these very recent strange phenomena that we’ve been seeing. Do you feel the project is one that you’re just going to keep discussing, or do you think it's going to move or evolve in some way?
EH: Yes, I think so. In a way, it feels like I’ve just finished up part one, because there is a renewed interest in UFOs and also reportage of UFO sightings from pretty credible sources, fighter pilots. The UFO phenomenon of the late ’40s into the ’50s, was coming into being and gaining attention during a time of Cold War tension and nuclear anxiety. Now we’ve got, I think you could argue, a renewed Cold War tension with Russia or China, and there’s anxiety about whether China possesses some hypersonic missile that eclipses our technology.
This interest in UFOs and these sightings have increased along with the anxiety about the technological abilities of foreign powers. Viewing Distance, as it is right now in the book, hints towards that and makes connections from the Cold War to the present. I think I can really expand on that moving forward.
MR: I think there’s a lot more opportunity. You mentioned you were recently in the show called Information. We’ve already had one information explosion, but I’m curious what the next one’s going to be like. It seems to continue to exponentially increase. It’s not just one jump up, it’s exponential. It seems like you will have the ability to create your own. Like you said before, you were creating your own UFO material, but then the explosion of all this other information that’s coming out as well, it just seems like there’s this confluence that’s happening with you and the work that can go on for a while.
It’s interesting how your evolution as photographer or as an artist has evolved from childhood, and you’re still involved in this world that’s like fantasy. You can maneuver through it as an adult, but you still get to—it’s like playing with fire trucks, and then people get older, and they’re actually a fireman or whatever. You had an interest in art at a young age, and as your interests have evolved, the interest in other aspects that still come from this childhood fascination, curiosity, and you’re still in it. That has to be pretty exciting.
EH: It is, yes. The more I think about it, the more connections I can find looking back. I always loved science fiction as a kid, Star Wars, Star Trek, anything like that. There’s definitely that element to my work, like when I find some archival images, they have that look that they could be out of a science fiction movie or something like that. Thinking about expanding on this going forward, there is this connection between the narratives that have developed about the UFO phenomenon and how those are tied to the history of experimental aircraft and clandestine technologies.
I think a few years ago, the CIA tweeted that more than half of all UFO sightings in the late ‘50s and ’60s were the U-2 spy plane. You could say that in a way, the developments of the military-industrial complex could have intentionally or unintentionally given birth to what we know as the UFO phenomenon. It might've been beneficial for the government to allow people to believe that these aircraft were UFOs rather than take the chance and acknowledge that they had seen some secret technology that they were not meant to see.
MR: Right, yes. I hear that in discussions now, that we found out that China may have this hypersonic missile, and that they may have leapfrogged the United States, but the United States plays the same games, it’s very secretive, very mysterious. It’s interesting that you can create these environments through your photography and these discussions with your photography about nationalism and, like you said, the military-industrial complex, the surveillance state, the intelligence state, and things like that.
Jumping from that into the new technology we’re living in now, the photography that you create now with found material, you also enhance it through what I am calling the glitch aesthetic. I’m curious what the glitch aesthetic adds to your work. Because I’ve seen this with other photographers recently. We just interviewed Jen Everett. She does the same thing with her found objects of family images. What is the glitch aesthetic to you, and what does it do to transform your work?
EH: One thing that Jen and I have in common is that we do see the glitch as signifying a rupture, an interruption or disruption of the image. We’re dealing with different subject matter and have different intentions, but that is one element that led me towards either scanning errors, or editing the text code of digital images to remove or rearrange information to give it the look of a glitch. To me, that is a digital update of a lot of the technical errors I would encounter in archival images. As images are reproduced, as they’re digitized, things go wrong, and the images become disrupted or partially damaged because of the process of being reproduced in some way.
That was part of it, and then another aspect is that it gives the sense of the image being in a transitional state. For me, that’s showing an image that is open to interpretation. It changes as it’s reproduced, it changes as it’s shown in a different context, as it’s combined with other images. Images are always in a state of flux and transformation, especially with how accessible digital image editing software is now.
One specific way that I use that visual language is with the images I have of supersonic aircraft. When I was experimenting with different ways of disrupting and transforming these images, one of the methods I started exploring was transforming image files into raw data so that I could input them into audio editing software and then manipulate them as if they were audio clips. I can apply an echo effect or a delay effect, and that will transform the image in some way, whether it’s repeating parts of the image, transforming the color.
I thought that was a really appropriate tool to use for these images of experimental supersonic aircraft, because even in the images that capture them breaking the sound barrier, and there’s that burst of air or shockwave, they always look perfectly still and floating. I’ve found that processing those with the audio software, not only is it appropriate because it’s a picture of a sonic boom of a plane moving faster than the speed of sound, but it is a way to visually inject a sense of energy and movement into them. So, that’s a specific instance of a glitch-like aesthetic in my work.
MR: With the glitch aesthetic, and it’s not new, it’s been around probably since the ’80s, but I’ve seen more and more of it. Most of what I’ve seen in the past is related to video, but now more of it is added to still images, and it’s becoming more of a contemporary approach with photography as an error. How does that interpret the initial found image? If it’s a found image, and then it’s glitched in some way, it brings it to the present because even though it’s like still an error, it’s something more contemporary. How does the glitch also make the work? Does it make it more valid, or does it make it even more mysterious?
EH: I think it depends on the particular image that’s being transformed. Some of the images that I’ve obtained lack context. They don’t have any accompanying text documents to give more information about what’s in the image. The image could be very mysterious to begin with, and from the way that I choose to process it, it does give it that sense of having traveled from the past to the present and having gone through iterations or different translations. It’s a way to represent that idea of transformation through reproduction and circulation.
It becomes less sometimes about what’s specifically in the image and more about this picture that signifies an image that has traveled over time and changed during that process. As a result of its initial or current lack of context, it takes on a new life and becomes open to different interpretations and associations.
MR: It becomes more of an abstraction, which you’ve always had an interest in as well. It becomes its own signifier on its own definition, and even though it’s used in a historical context, it’s still separated out. It becomes a new character.
EH: A lot of the images are rooted in very specific historical circumstances, but because the way I’ve encountered them often lacks contextual information, they’ve lost their utility as being purely documentary or informational. Now it’s just in a way purely visual data that can be opened up to all these new ways of viewing or interpreting.
MR: Let’s go to the book. This is probably the last thing that you’ve worked on before this interview. You said that you got the attention from Daylight from the show that you had in Chicago. How did that process work out, where you ended up working with Daylight, going through the process of fundraising, and then producing the book? I think people have two different roads to go down as far as publishing. They either want to self-publish and have complete control over every aspect of publishing. Or you can go down the road where you do some fundraising and have a publishing company that can actually do distribution for you, distribution, PR, marketing, and all that stuff.
To me they’re equally valid. I think there are some differences in approach that people would be challenged by. If you can talk about that and how you feel the bookmaking process went and how you would do it maybe in the future also.
EH: That show at Filter in Chicago was in March 2020. I dropped off my work for that show the week the country went into lockdown and I made it just in time. Later that week I was contacted by Daylight because promotional material had probably gone out about the show, and the gallery decided to keep it as a physical exhibition but also make it an online exhibition. That ended up being great because it allowed a lot more people to see the work. When Daylight contacted me, I was very excited by the idea. I thought that the Viewing Distance series I had been working on was probably meant to be a book because I wanted to have these images always seen within the context of one another and to be able to frame them with text as well.
I also thought it would be a callback to these different government manuals and texts that I collected and encountered over the years. The fact that the global pandemic had just started took some of the excitement out of the idea of making a book, and I just wasn’t sure if it was the right time to commit to something like that, because I knew it would take a good amount of fundraising. I’d known other artists who had gone through this process in the past, so I knew it was possible. I just didn’t know if I was ready to take that on at the moment, and I didn’t feel like the body of work was finished yet. I felt like there were lots more images I had collected that I needed to work on and make some more conceptual connections.
I left it with Daylight that maybe we’d talk again in a few months and see how things were looking. I spent those first few months of the pandemic being really productive with the Viewing Distance series. That’s when I started experimenting with audio software and some other ways of transforming images, and finally getting around to being able to collage certain images together that I had collected. I got a lot done. By the time Daylight got back in touch with me, I really had made a lot of progress on the series, so I thought, “Okay, I’m just going to take a leap and hope for the best.”
That was June of 2020, and that also gave me time to prepare because I knew it would be a fall 2021 release for the book. I knew I had time to polish up the work a bit, do some writing, and do some fundraising. There was quite a bit of downtime because Daylight was busy finishing up their spring and upcoming fall seasons. That gave me time to think about narrowing down my images to around fifty. When things started up again with Daylight in the fall of 2020, we began the design process, and that was a big thing for me because when I had thought about doing a book in the past in a more DIY fashion, I just felt completely lost.
I know how to use InDesign, and I know people who have done great things by using a service like Blurb. I had made little photocopy zines before for an exhibition. I thought my work was conducive to the book format, but I didn’t know where to begin in terms of materials and the different things that were possible with photo books. I worked with Daylight's book designer, Ursula Damm. She suggested I give her everything I had, including b-sides and outtakes, and she would take a stab at sequencing and layout of images.
I thought, “Sure,” because there’s a sequence that I’ve had in mind, but I would love a fresh pair of eyes on it. She had ideas that I never would’ve thought of in terms of sequencing and layout, which images should be a two-page spread, which ones should be maybe more of a diptych, and which ones should be isolated. I was so happy with her suggestions, and I only had a few adjustments that I wanted to make. It was interesting that she picked out some images that I just thought were experiments or tests. A couple of those made it into the book, but for the most part, it was about fifty images that I had originally thought were ready and finished.
Another thing about collaborating with a designer like Ursula was that she knew what was possible in terms of a special feature that might work within our budget. In the book, there are four tip-ins, which are inserts printed on a different type of paper—in this case, more of copy type paper—that are then glued into the binding. That was a good way to include some of these redacted documents that I’d collected in which the subject matter pertains to the technology and operations shown in the book, but they don’t really have much to tell you because they’re all blacked out. They’re from the CIA and National Reconnaissance Office.
That was a more creative way to include those documents in the book that felt like they really were in some declassified file. I never would have known that was possible had I not been collaborating with a professional. It all came together so easily really. I sent her a few ideas about things to take as inspiration for the book cover. We ended up using a page from the Defense Intelligence Agency style guide for inspiration. All these agencies are very specific about their layouts, their graphic design. So we decided to borrow from their graphic design for the cover.
In the end, I had complete creative control, but I needed some fresh eyes and a second opinion while I worked through the process. From there, it was a lot of going back and forth with the printer to do test prints and make sure that the colors were accurate based on the type of paper that I chose. Then soliciting an art historian, Lily Brewer, to contribute text, and writing my own introduction as well. It was a year-long process, basically.
MR: Then it was completed, and it’s due for sale the end of November.
EH: Yes.
MR: You got some advance copies. When you first saw the finished product, what were your thoughts when you started to flip through it?
EH: It was interesting because it was a very gradual process. I had an idea of what the prints would look like because I had gotten the test copies. They sent me a hardcover proof of the paper over board that the prints would be bound to. I had all the bits and pieces. They even sent me proofs for the tip-ins, but actually seeing it together was a pretty different experience that I didn’t quite expect. I thought that I had it in my head the way it was going to look. I think it was actually better once I had the tangible copy than the way it had been existing in my head, the professional quality of the cover, the binding, the paper, the inserts, and the text layout of the introduction, and then the essay by Lily Brewer. I just couldn’t have been happier with how it all came together and having that tangible object in my hand and being able to flip through it.
MR: Your experience working with a publisher was very positive, and you felt like they had your creative intentions in mind, and the end result was better than you hoped for apparently. That seems like a complete success. The book will be available soon, and everybody can get their hands on it. You felt like this was almost the beginning of something. What do you feel is going to happen? What does the future hold?
EH: Ideally, I think it is continuing with publishing and working in this format. It’s just daunting right now to think about beginning that whole process over again because even though the fundraiser was a success, it was a lot of work, and it was nerve-racking not knowing if it was going to be a success. Luckily, it did reach its goal ahead of time, and it was not quite as difficult as I was anticipating. It’s its own full-time job in and of itself, when you combine the fundraising, completing your body of work, working with the book designer, working on the text, working with a copy editor. It is spread out over a number of months, but you have to meet certain deadlines. That was good for me. I’m somebody who works well with deadlines, and I was glad that I had those goals. It’s almost like you don’t have a choice. If you want the book to come out fall 2021, you’ve got to meet these deadlines for your own work and for the fundraising aspect. Now that book is complete, I’m at a place where I’m at the beginning again, I’m at zero. [Chuckles.] I don’t know when I might necessarily have the funding to begin this process all over again.
The next step is having that goal of continuing to work in the book format. Like I said, I’ve got all these different ways that I can expand on Viewing Distance, whether that becomes a whole new body of work or just the second part of it or second volume. I’m more focused on exploring other avenues for funding like grants. I feel like I’ve gotten to the point where that is really necessary for me to continue on with this work.
MR: Right, yes. This goes towards the people that are emerging photographers and building their career as a photographer. You’re explaining the process of creating a donor base and expanding your reach into different areas. This book is going to help you find more donors over time, and just the fact that people have some physical, tangible object that, to be honest, isn’t an expense like it would be purchasing your photographs. It’s an avenue to expand your audience and your patrons in order to continue your career as a photographer. I think that’s really helpful for people to understand, that you need to create the work of art, you need to create the series, and then put it into the photography world through all the avenues that are available.
EH: Right. I think it actually ended up being a good time to publish a book, when the future of galleries and in-person exhibitions is kind of up in the air. It’s a good alternative to digital because, again, it’s this tangible object that you can flip through at your own pace. The images take on a different quality when they’re printed. Photo books have been expanding over the past ten years or so. More and more photographers are deciding to go that route. Especially now, it’s something that if you’ve got the time, energy, and commitment to fundraising or are willing to put up some of your own funding, or pursue grants, it’s a good time to do it when seeing art in person is very limited. Having things up on a website is great, but it’s just a different experience.
For information on the work of Evan Hume visit his website at http://evan-hume.com