June 2022 AIR: Alan Huck
We are excited to share the work of our June Artist in Residence - Alan Huck
Learn more about their practice and how they pick and use language for their work.
Q & A
Q: HOW DO YOU DETERMINE WHAT TEXTS YOU USE WITH THE IMAGES? WHICH COMES FIRST, THE LANGUAGE OR THE PHOTOGRAPH?
I like W. J. T. Mitchell’s suggestion that the relevant texts are, to some extent, “already inside the image.” It’s a matter of figuring out which texts can speak through or with certain pictures, but there’s no set order of arrangement in my case. I’m constantly accumulating and sifting through heaps of images and words, and in the end it becomes like a complex puzzle or matching game. On one hand I have photography, which engages with the external world, and then there’s my interior life where thoughts intermingle with the material I encounter through books and films. The part of the process I relish is trying to establish the various points at which those things can coalesce.
Q: I SEE THAT YOU USE WALKING AS A MODE OF ARTISTIC PRACTICE. WHAT TYPES OF ENVIRONMENTS DO YOU LIKE TO EXPLORE? WHAT OTHER INTERESTS DO YOU INCORPORATE INTO YOUR ART-MAKING?
I’m mostly attracted to what might be called terrain vague—those nondescript urban areas whose function is difficult to identify (former industrial zones, tracts of land around and between highways, other places “off the beaten path.”) It’s not especially novel but I like being in the peripheries.
As for other interests, part of the reason I love photography is because it can encompass anything and everything, even subjects that aren’t explicitly visible. Right now, with different projects, I’m trying to sort out how to reconcile photography with my interests in historiography, literary theory, and theater, among other things. Those preoccupations are always changing or being given greater emphasis at certain times, but it seems like there’s no end to what might get channeled through the medium.
Q: IF YOU COULD EXPLORE AND TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS IN A MAKE-BELIEVE LAND, WHICH ONE WOULD YOU CHOOSE?
My first instinct would be to move through the imagined worlds of Eastern European science fiction films—Andrzej Żuławski's On the Silver Globe (1988) or Piotr Szulkin’s O-Bi, O-Ba: The End of Civilization (1985), for example. They would be harrowing, nightmarish places to actually exist in, but there’s something fascinating to me about inhabiting these possible dystopian futures (especially as they were envisioned in the 1980s). I’d even settle for just being a set photographer.
Q: YOUR PHOTOGRAPHS SEEM TO WHISPER AND HAVE A SECRET QUALITY TO THEM. DO YOU THINK BLACK AND WHITE IMAGES LEND TO THIS QUALITY OF SECRECY?
I think that’s probably true. I’m very much committed to documentary photography and the idea that the world offers up more stimulating material than whatever I might be able to conjure up from scratch in a studio. Photography is a mode of response for me, and going through extended periods of time without photographing makes me realize how much I need it as a tether to the outside world. I think maybe that aspect of “secrecy” comes out of wrenching these images from their broader context, but it may also just be a result of the fact that it’s very much a solitary activity, just a person wandering around looking for things.
Q: DO YOU EVER USE SUBTITLES AS A LANGUAGE FOR YOUR PHOTOGRAPHS? IF YOU HAD TO USE ONE MOVIE’S SUBTITLES, WHICH ONE WOULD YOU CHOOSE?
I do—I pull from just about everything I consume, and films are no exception. My first book
borrows themes from Jacques Rivette’s Le Pont du Nord (1981) and Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979), and also incorporates direct dialogue from both of them. The voiceover component of essay films from people like Chris Marker, Chantal Akerman, Mark Rappaport, and others also really informs how I think through structuring word and image together. If I had to choose a single set of subtitles, I’d probably select something by Marguerite Duras—Agatha and the Limitless Readings (1981) perhaps. Her scripts are so suggestive, almost like they’re half finished, leaving open a lot of possibilities for what kind of imagery might flow beneath them.
ALAN HUCK
Alan Huck (b. 1990) is a photographer, writer, and educator currently based out of Chicago. He received his MFA from the University of Hartford’s international low-residency program in 2018. His first book, I walk toward the sun which is always going down, was published by MACK in September 2019 and shortlisted for the 2020 Rencontres d’Arles Photo-text Book Award. He serves as a mentor through the Image Threads Collective mentorship program and teaches various interdisciplinary photography workshops through the New York City-based Penumbra Foundation.