"Natural History, (Chicago)-12"
1996
color photograph
dimensions variable
Sean Wilkinson lives in Kettering, Ohio and teaches at the University of Dayton where he is chair of the Department of Visual Arts. He attended Antioch College where he received his B.A. in art and participated in their cooperative education program that included work as a psychiatric halfway house resident intern, potter, cabinetmaker, architectural model builder, bookstore manager, and photographer's assistant. In 1969 he worked with Minor White at MIT, assisting with classes and managing the photography lab; he also helped to run workshops and assisted White with his photographic and writing projects. He earned his M.F.A. in photography from Rhode Island School of Design in 1972 after a year of study with Harry Callahan and a year with Aaron Siskind.
Wilkinson taught photography part-time at Harvard University before moving to Dayton to create and develop curriculum and facilities in photography. He has travelled in Ireland, Italy, Greece, England, France, and Malta. He has been awarded Individual Artist Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council and the Montgomery County Regional Arts and Cultural District. He has shown his work in solo and group exhibitions throughout America and his photographs are in major museum and corporate collections.
The subject matter of Wilkinson's photographs include the ceiling of an old greenhouse in an advanced state of decay, dioramas in natural history museums, portrait medallions in Jewish cemeteries, and out of focus pictures made in art museums and other locations.
I prefer to work in places and with things that have a sense of presence, and
with which I feel
myself to be fully present. These qualities may be found in almost anything; in
some ways,
photography is as easy as it seems. The challenge is to see. Like breathing, it
appears simple
until you give it your complete attention. All good photographs, it seems to
me, are gifts. I am
inclined to make images of ordinary things, plainly seen, illuminated by their
own inherent
grace. The success of such pictures depends upon unpredictable combinations of
diligence and
dumb good fortune.
Artist Statement
"One is taught to oppose the real and the imaginary, as though the first were
always at hand
and the second distant, far away. This opposition is false. Events are always
to hand. But the
coherence of these events -- which is what one means by reality -- is an
imaginative
construction."
"The poem is the cry of its occasion,
Part of the res itself and not about it."
"To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also."
Selected Quotations
- John Berger, from "And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos"
- Wallace Stevens from "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven"
- Igor Stravinsky