Gelatin Photograph 72, from the series "Gelatin Photographs"

Since the late 1970s, James Welling has been fascinated with the history of camera images and camera technologies. Although he is often associated with artists of the Pictures Generation, who have investigated photography as the broad basis for all visual representation in our time, Welling is also deeply interested in the specific history of photography and its most common elements—for example, gelatin. To make this image, Welling cooked batches of gelatin—the binder layer for gelatin silver prints, but also an ordinary food item—mixed with dark ink. After refrigerating the substance, he then arranged chunks of it onto areas of seamless background paper of the sort used by commercial product or studio portrait photographers. The final composition is highly self-reflexive, taking “the stuff” of photography literally and metaphorically.