Creative Conclusions

The Face of Freedom is an evolving multi-location series of events that combine stirring visual art through subject selection, portrait stills, multiple narratives, and richly textured video and sound material across geographical locations. Collaborative works by rising artists, The Face of Freedom involves an interplay among three environments: stills, film, and narrative, where borders are permeated, new relationships developed, and the expressive power of the blended mediums made visible and cohesive. The content focuses on people foremost, places, and most importantly the human spirit. As the artists and their synergetic visions pass information back and forth, an interaction among them senses the geographies, scales, and narratives represented in the work they create. The differing perceptions and the multiple intersecting journeys they create and suggest lay at the heart of this work. Premiered through Fourteen Days in America, in August 2004, The Face of Freedom includes a simultaneous performance by each of the participating artists across changing environments and landscape. Scottsdale Arizona based creator from England David William Gibbons is author of, Welding Boundaries, a future book to be made up of narrative describing the analysis of and choice in bringing subjects to the camera. This is created by fitting together differently placed people from isolated but ultimately similar backgrounds. The resulting piece, which will be debuted from 2005, is part of a larger direction in Gibbons work in which the artist Richard Knapp dramatically transfers creative energy into visual stills; in this case using an indifferent, subjectively controlled eye using camera and symbolic vision.

Noting his interest in artist Knapp, whose photographs complicate notions of foreground and background, Gibbons explains, who studied Photography as an undergraduate, that he has always been drawn to the relationship between positive and negative space. "The boundaries in the photographs became more and more complicated," says Gibbons. "I'm especially thinking of the warmth and cold where two artists collide -- is the warmth falling into the cold or is there a chemistry which simply endures the test of time? It's like two liquids mixing."

Gibbons likes the idea of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle formed around the matter of uncertainty, which in physics explores the effect of the observer on the observed. Adaptation to the arts leads to Gibbons suggestion that you wouldn't observe the subject without altering it. Therefore, what Gibbons feels in selection of a subject can be redefined by Knapp by restoring a natural balance.

Welding Boundaries will identify Gibbons's ongoing interests in alternative approaches to creativity in general, and in the divide separating what you perceive and the finished image in particular. In this case, that being the photograph. "I can take intangible elements and thought process's and make them into objects," says Gibbons, explaining that objects in this case are in fact photographs. "When you take something that has been around, and then apply the photographer and his lens, you can create totally new things. I'm interested in using this concept and sequence to paint the fabrication of humanity."

Artists David William Gibbons and Richard Knapp met in Los Angeles in late 2003 when they were simultaneously involved in the business of photography. Gibbons had by this time been working on The Face of Freedom project for several years. Gibbons, who is a company head and read in photography and literature, says that he approached Knapp after he had began to search for new ways of grappling with social issues through visual arts. A friend had told Gibbons early on that he couldn't expect to achieve this on his own. "He said that I had to invent a new way of doing it," explains Gibbons. And that's what Gibbons and Knapp have done in their interactive collaboration, with astonishing results.

"We met through a mutual acquaintance," says Gibbons, who goes on to explain that the pair's auspicious meeting was on a blustery afternoon during late fall in Los Angeles. This encounter eventually lead to a collection, which juxtaposes material (subjects) selected by Gibbons through a special approach and trust gained by interaction with them and taken by photographer Richard Knapp with an accompanying journal written by Gibbons during their journey. The project also had an incarnation as a documentary, and the artists unknowingly created a video confessional in which visitors could respond to their pursuits and objectives.

As with the documentary the duo seem to crave this sort of visceral or earthy, instinctive, interaction. "The audience can be integrated into these projects in so many different ways," explains Gibbons. "They can articulate their experience and confront the meaning of what they know, or they can have the opportunity to be part of a larger dialogue."

Face of Freedom, Gibbons decided, and, after much contemplation, should be a project in which people could explain their own stories about how they are affected by everything around them, emotionally, philosophically, and politically. The project uses a four-part structure, each part involving the audience in different ways. There is a social function initially during selection. A portrait is then taken by Knapp to act as a counter balance. There is an interview stage finally that allows participants to find out as much about themselves as it does the audience, while being asked for their opinion on why people do what they do among other questions, then providing in return analysis of their response through web based moderated discussion forums. However, the heart of the project are the series of personal stories, each of which centers on the life of someone and all through portraits and film. "As viewers listen to the documentary film, they will be able to get a sense of process through which they were captured, represented and respected.

The Face of Freedom web site is integral in serving as the forum mentioned before in which people can interact with each other to grapple with extraordinary subjects and issues. "It's important to encapsulate your audience, to give them an environment to blend in. In the forum you're allowing your audience to continue there participation and be somewhere, even though they're really nowhere." This will bring together college students, gang members, anybody over time to discuss life. It will also allow discussion on the way these photographs and interviews brought about change. According to Gibbons, the event had a radical impact on most involved, which in turned helped inspire the artists -- who were gratified to witness change take root.

Gibbons is now at work on the next stage of The Face of Freedom, Fourteen Days in Great Britain.

Of the project going forward Gibbons states "I'm interested in experimenting with how analysis and selection of subjects, photographs and narratives are constructed. Most projects are spoon-fed to you. A traditional trail of objectives -- heightened action, climax, and finality. In this project, there is a lot of information, but it's not always clear. I provide you with enough to see that ultimately everybody is the same with material encapsulating moments of important duality that are connected by the importance of visual information. That information is provided by the camera and the artist behind it"

Originally planning to be a painter, Gibbons turned to photography as a means of synchronizing the two interests. Early on, he found inspiration in the work of Western photographers like Steiglitz and Weston, whom he discovered while on location in the Midi Pyrenees. "Oddly, the museums and institutions in this region have numerous references to these and other tremendous photographers," he noted. One aspect of these exhibits that intrigued him was that "these photographers understand how to talk about people through their pictures. They don't use dialogue, but have created a visual form that isn't silent. I saw this not so much in the way Knapp's work finishes up but the way he works with people to create it after my introduction has captured there trust. The work confirms the strategy".

Gibbons has taken up the same challenge with a documentary Fourteen Days in America, an inaugural film: that is to make a film without dialogue that transcends language through visual conveyers. Unlike many influential mentors, however, Gibbons shuns political content. For one thing, each of the meetings that Gibbons & Knapp have with people is purposefully too short to complete for such references to stay current. "I'm more interested in cultural or social situations than in political ones." Gibbons like Knapp omit specific references in their art, aiming to create something more universal.

"One of the things that was most interesting to me was the process of finding my way through to the point where I really understood that you don't take photographs as if they alone are going to explain the whole picture"

"You don't look on images as representation of the person. You take a different tact, which is to select the subject independently of the photographer as a balance in the development of the work".

During Fourteen Days in America, each of the artists were in a different location, but their contributions to the end piece come together as will the exhibition of work. When the work is finally exhibited there will be a large curved screen and rows of chairs, with sound emanating from multiple directions (focus) to help create an immersive environment. The stills will slide through in rhythm to music and subject matter enhanced by responses taken from interviews. In the future it is apparent however that the power of the work itself will dictate the delivery to a worldwide audience.

In short, the exhibition continues a central focus, namely visual culture, and the ways in which we make sense of the world.

D. William Gibbons
October 10, 2004