Editing the world
For Jeff Condit, a photograph is just the entry point to a fantasy world of colors and shapes
Originally published in Ultimate Northwest magazine
In 2000, as Jeff Condit took photos of Antoni Gaudi’s elaborate unfinished Sagrada Familia cathedral facade in Barcelona, Spain, his vision of what his work could become opened wider than a large-aperature lens.
Condit’s work – which he doesn’t call photography – uses the photograph as just the starting place. “I use the image to lay the foundation,” says the 57-year-old Portlander. “Then I go off into a fantasy world and create a new piece.”
Condit’s photographs often drawn or painted on, evolve into “more of a sketch that I can change at any time,” he says, contradicting purists’ beliefs that a photo shouldn’t be tampered with.
He uses computer technology and archival processes and materials, such as paper with a tooth, or surface texture, rather than traditional photography sheets.
