Don Freeman's World of Memories and Dreams, Considered. By Kevin Guyer Don Freeman is an American photographer, best known for his large, monochrome prints that depict subject matter, be it landscape, human forms or architectural fragments, in states of transmogrification. He divides his time between New York City and a small cabin in the Catskill Mountains that he shares with his partner Garo Sparo and his two Whippets, Storm and Ginger. When I first met Don Freeman, in 1984, he was living in New York City's infamous artist housing project. Westbeth – a former Bell Laboratories building that was turned into subsidized artist housing in the late 60's. A rather grungy place, which seemed to be permanently plagued by New York's ubiquitous cockroaches, it was once home to the photographer of the subversive, Diane Arbus, who lived		and died there, slashing her wrists in her bathtub in 1971. Don was supporting himself as a graphic designer at the time, while furiously painting in the evenings. At the time his subject matter was deeply rooted in religious iconography, the Madonna and Child to be specific. Raised as a Lutheran, Don's concept was to transform the Catholic Renaissance work of Giovanni Bellini into an Eastern Orthodox icon via silk screens and hand applied gold leaf. Fueled with coffee and beer, the Penguin Café Orchestra and This Mortal Coil playing on the stereo, Don spent weeks applying and burnishing gold-leaf halos to the 50 silk-screened Madonnas that would ultimately cover an entire wall at the Stokker Stikker gallery in New York's East Village. For the next years, Don mined religious iconography and images of classical antiquity to produce his hybrids of painting and photography.		It was during this time that Don discovered photographic print toning and he abandoned painting completely, and started working with only his camera and his toning chemicals, creating work that explored tonality, depicted blurred and often fragmented images. The toners that Don chose to work with were single color, dye based, manufactured by Edwal. Dye toning kits were the domain of the amateur photographer who wanted to evoke a mood and nostalgia. In Don's hands, these kitsch materials were transformed into a highly nuanced color system. The resulting image is no longer a traditional black and white photograph as the toning bath creates a chemical reaction that transforms the metallic silver in the paper to a dye. Over the years Don pushed the envelope on what a photograph could be, he next moved on to using architectural blue printing to create a series of highly nuanced prints of		flowers and Greek and Roman antiquities. As the blueprint process is highly unstable, something that Don was aware of, the images would degrade when exposed to light, creating ghosts of the original images. I remember visiting him once at a house he was renting in Sag Harbour, NY and seeing a wall of pale markings and realizing that earlier that year they were deep blue images of peonies. One has to remember at this point in time, the mid – late 80's AIDS was ravaging New York's creative community. A day didn't go by when you didn't hear of another friend testing positive for HIV. Like so many others, Don watched so many of his friends transform into shadows of their original selves. It's in this context that Don's work, which was based around spirituality and transformation, must be considered. Like so many photographers Don's work now incorporates digital technology, leaving behind many
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hands-on mechanical techniques. However, the imagery still stays the same. Don has created a catalog of images over the years; photos of flowers, antiquities, letters and architectural details that function as his noumenons awaiting their transformation by Don into subjective, tangible images. Don refers to his collection of images as, "a sort of Noah's Ark." I recently spoke with Don about the images he's chosen to appear in this profile. Being very influenced by cinema, specifically the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, and more specifically Tarkovsky's film Mirror, in which Tarkovsky creates a visual narrative that combines past and present, dreams and reality, color and black-and-white; things at the core of Don's interests. Don is very emphatic that his images appear in a specific, programmed sequence, creating a visual narrative that functions to create an emotional, sub-verbal impression as one passes from one still image to the		next. He's also worked in film himself. His first film, entitled, Tires, Velvet, Paws, is a super 8 black and white film, loosely based on Andre Breton's novel Nadja. It was shot at night in Paris, along the Seine. I've chosen to let Don's own words, a sort of stream of conscious, describe his ideas behind the sequence of his images that appears on the following pages. The Clouds: "I was riding the ferry from Greece to Turkey and I shot these clouds, they're the most beautiful clouds I've ever seen. I never had to shoot another cloud since. Clouds have a way of pausing you, to me they're god." The Curtains: "They're from a confessional in a church in Arezzo. I was taken in by the minute, human detail; you can actually see that they were stitched by hand. I think they express ideas that are deeper than words."		The Lilies: "They're from a medieval garden I was shooting after this huge rainstorm. There's a philosophy from medieval times that you don't prune anything, you just let everything fall to the ground – so everything reseeds itself." The Words: "I started collecting calligraphy and old letters at flea markets. I call them my Poison Letter series, they're about women who poison their lovers to get away from them – the idea of being poisoned by love." The Woman's Face: "This one's inspired by a statue that's outdoors and stained by nature – the idea of someone turning to marble. It's based on my favorite myth, Pygmalion, only in reverse. Beauty is a trap we all fall into." The Dead Bird: I was on my way home one winter's night and found it in the street; there was a foot of snow on the ground. I brought it up to my roof, spread its wings and left		it there. I forgot about it for a week and then went up and photographed it. I call it Dead Bird/Live Bird – depending on which way you hang it, it could be seen as dead or ready to fly away. The Landscape: I shot this pond in England during a full moon – I used a long exposure – 5 minutes or so. I've always loved Edward Steichen's moonlight picture of Rodin's Balzac statue." A Series of 4 Branches: "My branch series is an ongoing project. I like the idea of coming face to face with something beautiful without anything coming between the image and me. They're very graphic and probably reflect my formal training as a graphic designer. When I exhibit them they're presented like a checkerboard, one black, one white, after the other, across the wall. 2 Reversed Letters: "I create these in the darkroom by putting two different negatives together, one of a
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letter and one of something abstract. They're very spontaneous and random. I don't organize my negatives – I throw them into a box. It forces me to revisit them with a fresh eye. They can all be new possibilities that way." The Light Shaft: "This was shot in Pompeii. I was really influenced by the work of Anish Kapoor at the time, I was experimenting with exposures, I wasn't so interested in communicating that I was in Pompeii, this photograph could have been taken anywhere, it's the light that was important." The Stairway: "It's a stairway in a mirror, an outtake from a interiors assignment I was doing. Staircases mean so many different things, dream imagery, progress, success, approaching divinity and bringing yourself to a higher level." Smoke: I was sitting in front of a fireplace with two of my friends, one later killed himself. To me, this		picture is about him and that evening. I never took another picture of smoke again. I have a spiritual connection to my camera, it gives me a tool that allows me to say what I need." Don's work is featured regularly in the pages of World of Interiors, He's did all the photography for Taschen Books, The Hotel Book: Great Escapes North America, he collaborated with jeweler Ted Muehling on the monogram published by Rizzoli. 2010 will see the publication of his book entitled the Artist Home published by Abrams which Don is directing an ensconcing feature documentary film. Don was born in Yakasuka, Japan and grew up on Bainbridge Island, near Seattle, Washington. He attended Northern Arizona University and San Francisco Academy of Art before moving to New York in 1983. Don's work is in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum and Associations Paris		Musees. Private collectors include: Paloma Picasso, Princess Caroline of Monaco, Christian Liagre and Jacques Grange. Corporate collections include: Polo Ralph Lauren, Christian Dior and Banana Republic.		DON FREEMAN Born: 1957, Yakasuka, Japan, raised on Bainbridge Island, Washington EDUCATION 1979 Northern Arizona University, AZ 1980 San Francisco Academy of Art, CA, BFA SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2008 IBU gallery, Paris, France March, San Francisco, CA LMD New York, New York, NY 2001 Branches, Comerford Hennesy, Bridgehampton, NY
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2000 Hemphill. Gallery, Washington, DC Ted Muehling and Don Freeman, IBU gallery, Paris, France 1997 Elga Wimmer Gallery, New York, NY 1995 Downtown/Uptown Gallery LOK, Wainscott, NY 1994 Decouvert, Paris, France Elga Wimmer Gallery, New York, NY 1993 Private View, Paris, France 1992 Pierre Passebon, Paris, France 1988 Ernst Alexander Gallery, Washington, DC 1987 Rastovski Gallery, New York, NY		1985 White Columns, New York, NY Stokker Stikker Gallery, New York, NY GROUP EXHIBITIONS 1999 Female, curated by Vince Aletti, Wessel + O'Connor, New York, NY Black, White, Beautiful, Hemphill. Fine Arts, Washington, DC 1995 Bloom, Downtown/Uptown Gallery LOK, Wainscott, New York Bridgewater Lustberg Gallery, New York, NY 1994 A Garden, Barbara Krakow Gallery, Boston, MA 1992 Balade de L'Amour, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, France		1991 Je crois entendre encore, Collector Magazine Benefit Show, Paris, France (video) The Milky Way, Galerie Pierre Passebon, Paris, France 1990 Galerie Pierre Passebon, Paris, France (with Paul Mathieu and Michael Ray) 1988 Benefit Exhibition, White Columns, New York, NY 1987 Art Against Aids Benefit, Jeffrey Neale Gallery, New York, NY Rastovski Gallery, New York, NY 1986 Retroactive, Hallwalls, Buffalo, NY Update, White Columns, New York, NY Post Pluralism, Mission Gallery, New York, NY		SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 1991 House and Garden, New York, NY Vogue Decoration, Paris, France 1992 Architektur & Wohnen, Hamburg, Germany 1992 Photographies, Paris, France Jardin des Modes, Paris, France Elle Magazine, Paris, France 1993 Vogue Hommes, Paris, France Maison et Jardin, Paris, France Jardins des Modes, Paris, France Architektur & Wohnen, Hamburg, Germany 1994 The Village Voice, New York, NY, March 3 1995 The East Hampton Independent, East Hampton, NY
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Hampton's Magazine, East Hampton, NY Southampton Press, Southampton, NY Graphis, New York, NY 1991 House and Garden, New York, NY Vogue Decoration, Paris, France 1999 BLOOM, Kleban, Mika. Blue Prints No. 2, pps. 86-88, color The World of Interiors Wilkie, Angus. A Light Touch. London, England, pps. 82-91 2002 ADFrance, Gleizes, Serge. Galice Mystique, AD France, July-August, No. 24, pps.131-2008 The Atlantic Monthy, Benjamin Schwarz, A Bit of Punctuation, September 2009 Variatio. Milan, Italy -photo magazine feature article		SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS Associations Paris Musées, Paris, France Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England SELECTED COLLECTIONS L'Avenue Montaigne Cafe, Paris, France Banana Republic, San Francisco, CA Geoffrey Beene, New York, NY Buffy Birittello, New York, NY Carol Bouquet, Paris, France Christian Dior, Paris, France Andrew Frank, New York, NY Jacques Grange, Paris, France Deborah Hartley, London, England Marie Hélène and John Hopkins, London, England Holly Hunt, Chicago, IL Joseph Lembo, New York, NY Christian Liagre, Paris, France Paul Mathieu and Michael Ray, Paris, France David Mitchell, Washington, DC		Princess Caroline, Monaco Paloma Picasso, Paris, France Polo/Ralph Lauren, New York, NY Lynn Tesoro, New York, NY Harry von Weinberg, Paris, France William White, New York, NY COMPLETED PROJECTS 1994 Book: "My Familiar Dream" self published 2006 Book: "The Hotel Book: Great Escapes North America" published by Taschen 2008 Book: "Ted Muehling: A Portrait by Don Freeman" published by Rizzoli 2010 Book: "Artists' Handmade Houses" published by Abrams Editorial: Regular Contributor to The World of Interiors, Vogue, House		and Garden, Men's Vogue, Town & Counrtry, Vanity Fair, ADFrance and others. Advertising Campaigns for Ralph Lauren, Mulberry, Hermes, Stuben , Arteriors FILM PROJECTS 2010 Short: "Tires, Velvet Paws", a black and white film based on Andre Breton's Nadja. Shot in Paris in 1991, edited on Final Cut Pro to original soundtrack by Jaime Rudolph. 2010 Film: "Living Art" a documentary that explores the environments, homes and studios crafted by American artists of the 20th Century.
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