Jerry Uelsmann, a teacher at the University of Florida in Florida, was often seen with students carrying their wet prints. He was a popular teacher who allowed students to address him by name. He also smoked cigars, and popped popcorn occasionally during class. Moa Petersen’s new book is full of her signature humor and playful spirit Eighth Day Wonder A biography of Jerry Uelsmann, her friend who turned the world of photography upside down.
Petersen spent many years writing the biography. He is an art historian who met Uelsmann for the first time in 2016. The book is about Uelsmann, but also about a unique moment in photography history, when more artists began to experiment in the Darkroom and challenge the conventions that governed “straight photography”.
Uelsmann redefined photography by “breaking the rules” set forth by his predecessors. His work was a radical departure from the purist ideals that dominated the time. It didn’t reflect external reality, but rather an inner vision. He used multiple enlargers and negatives to build impossible montages.
It’s easy in this age of Photoshop to forget what Jerry Uelsmann accomplished in the darkroom. But as Petersen explains it, it was revolutionary. The idea that a photograph could be therapeutic and capture the unseen, hidden contours of the human imagination–revealing our memories, fears, and desires–was both thrilling and unsettling. The idea that a photo could be taken after releasing the shutter, e.g. It was liberating to work in the darkroom.
Uelsmann responded by stating that his images were created using materials purchased from a local photography shop. What else could they possibly be if not photos? Uelsmann’s photography classes were quickly filled as many young photographers adopted his rebellious spirit.
Uelsmann’s photographs are replete with recurring themes, such as eyes, trees, shells and nuts, but our interpretations of them will be highly subjective. We all project our memories and emotions on every layer. Petersen celebrates his legacy and accepts that he is a complex artist, who has been labelled a Surrealist by some.
Uelsmann’s photos are in many ways as mysterious and elusive, as the vast landscape that inspired him. In Gainesville in Florida, his darkroom was located in an area where alligators roamed freely and oak trees were tall. Jerry Uelsmann created new worlds in that darkroom. He was not bound by space or time. Up became down and the past became the present.
Petersen’s title, 8 Day Wonder refers to a quote by Ansel Adams: “God made the Earth in six days and, on the seventh, thought that ‘Maybe something needs to be changed. So, he created Jerry Uelsmann.”
Jerry Uelsmann, who never had the chance to see this final biography published by Kehrer Verlag comes alive once again in its pages. Petersen and Uelsmann remained close friends until 2022, when he passed away. He told her where we go after we die, wherever and whatever that may be. Unsurprisingly, he referred to it as the “big darkness room.”