Imprints II

Chateau International is pleased to present the second volume of Ben K. Voss & Midge Wattle’s IMPRINTS series, accompanied by a new text from the eminent poet and essayist, Ann Lauterbach. Beginning in the winter of 2018 during a residency in Aspen, Colorado, and continuing in the following summers along the shores of Lake Michigan, these silver gelatin photographs made by Wattles depict drawings in sand made by Voss.

Voss’s drawings are made intuitively with his hands, body, and materials he finds on site such as sticks, stones, shells, and water. In this new series, Voss develops his intuitive dialogue with the land and elements, responding both to the rhythm of waves on the lake, and the ever-shifting reflections of sky on the water. Wattles again approaches the drawings much like an explorer or archaeologist, discovering the imprints in an ever-changing, uncontrollable environment. Using traditional darkroom processes, Wattles prints the work using a variety of tones that obscure the viewer’s perception and disorient their sense of scale. In this way, a swift sketch, held in the wet sand for only a few moments, might appear as deep furoughs in a scarred landscape, viewed from the window of a plane.