Contemporary Art in Context: Rebekah Flake

There is a compelling number and variety of photographic genres that continue to expand in the twenty-first century. But no matter how far these genres evolve, traditional paradigms of photography, such as straight-image photography (unnuanced documentation), persist in importance. Contemporary photographers make imaginative use of the camera’s power to document reality. Photographers such as Rebekah Flake use their images to explore themes of identity, self-reflection, and history. Flake’s work references the persistence of history in terms of place and the relationship of place to community perceptions of self. Trained as an artist and art historian, Flake specializes in photography and production design, a field in which image and messaging are equally important.

Artworks and Process
Flake describes herself as a visual storyteller. She perceives her role as an artist as both a sponge and a mirror. In these roles, she is both collaborative and experimental, focusing her photographs on the intersection of social history and her personal interactions and identifications of specific places. She seeks creative inspiration in stories of transformation, perseverance, and hope. The beautiful mountain lake view from her exhibition The Canada Option (p. 26), which took place during the 150th anniversary of Canada’s independence, is part of her exploration of American attitudes toward Canada and citizenship. The Canadian lake, engulfed in smoke from virulent wildfires at the time, adds a layer of interpretive complexity to the landscape. Flake, who became a Canadian citizen in 2016, held a roundtable discussion during the exhibition about American citizenship from a variety of perspectives, including dual citizens, new immigrants, visa holders, and born and raised Americans. This event took place in the late 2010s amidst concerns about migration and an increased interest in Canadian citizenship.

Flake’s series of photos titled Legendary Tacony (p. 27) is a celebration of a neighborhood in northeastern Philadelphia where the Tacony metalworking factory owners established a workplace and dedicated housing for their employees over one hundred years ago. The Tacony factory has survived and now serves this neighborhood as a community arts center, a merging of idealism and practice in the same spirit as the factory community from a century ago. Her sympathetic and straightforward compositions that show the members of that community epitomize the snapshot aesthetic of straight-image photography.

Art History: Documentary Photography
When photography was in its infancy, more than 170 years ago, it was perceived as a medium of factual documentation—a feature that was praised by some artists who saw it as a means to heighten realistic detail in their paintings. By the end of the 1800s, however, many photographers had developed imaginative ways to use the camera to document reality. Straight-image photography evolved under the spell of photographers’ subjectivity, starting with Pictorialism in the late 1800s, which mimicked the subject matter and narrative of painting. In the twentieth century, straight-image photography that reflected the artist’s personal viewpoint was exemplified in works by social documentarians like Lewis Hine (1874–1940), Garry Winogrand (1895–1965), and Diane Arbus (1923–1971).

About the Artist
Rebekah Flake was born in California and raised in Mississippi. Her mother is a painter, so Flake was surrounded by art-making from a young age. She received a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in art history from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and an MFA in photography from the Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia. She was a 2015 finalist for a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship. She has worked in studios in Philadelphia; Oxford, Mississippi; and Austin, Texas, often in collaboration with other artists and communities. She also teaches photography and works in communications.

ARTIST Q&A
What are some of the biggest influences on your work?
RF: I use art to connect the big picture with a personal perspective. I am interested in how we can, as individuals, absorb clues from what’s going on around us without just getting pushed around.

In the very first week of my college career, we witnessed the 9/11 attacks on television from our campus in Philadelphia, which was located within a geographic triangle of the impacted sites. This occurred after I returned from a year living as an exchange student in Berlin, Germany, with a family who had spent their young lives in East Germany, behind the Wall separating them from loved ones and opportunities. Before that, I grew up in Mississippi, where the legacy of slavery and the cultivation of white supremacy is all around us, even now. I became aware of the significance of location in how we experience politics and social movements.

At the same time, my mother is a painter, and we always had beauty and creativity in our home. So, I guess my work is influenced by negotiating the private joy of being able to control all of these fascinating tools and materials, with the desire to face some of the heavy things that happen in public life. Art can give us a sense of agency. I saw artists like William Kentridge, Kerry James Marshall, and Jenny Holzer pursue fluency in their medium while incorporating complicated issues in the subject matter. I always respected that.

How does your work balance aesthetics with social practice?
RF: Some images are meant to provoke an immediate response. These may be more overt, and they’re intended for museums or publications, when viewers are open to and expecting brief but poignant encounters.

I also create “slower” works. These are more aesthetically driven, and social context is baked in. The interpretive possibilities unfold by looking longer or learning more of the backstory. These works are meant to be lived with and can be installed more permanently in private spaces and homes. They are traditionally scaled and sometimes more “attractive.” You might have to look at them over and over to take in the details or find the hidden subtext. The message is still there, but it’s meant to be durational and sometimes perplexing.

I want to create works that are born in an instant but can be experienced repeatedly. Certain aesthetic choices in color, composition, and format build a bridge to the viewer and extend the life of the work. This, in the end, is a political stance. I don’t want to add to the proliferation of polarizing posters and signs. I believe we all have more in common than we think, but we’re not able to take time to reflect on our shared humanity. Activism matters, but my goal is to participate in long-term, nuanced dialog, and—hopefully—change.

What is a more powerful visual voice for your work—the human figure, the environment, or a combination of both?
RF: It’s both! When you don’t see a figure depicted in my work, you just might be the figure completing the composition! Or sometimes I myself am an implied presence. What might not translate in the pages of this magazine is that I prefer to work at very large or very small scales. One photograph might be six feet or larger, sometimes activated beyond that by a sculptural element. Sometimes I project video onto the side of a public building. Alternatively, I am drawn to small works that you can approach very closely or hold in your hand. I am playing with immersion and intimacy.

Art doesn’t just happen to exist in the world—humans make it and humans experience it. This is also what I try to express in my images. The political and spatial situations in which we exist didn’t come to be without our interventions. So, how can we have agency to affect our environments in the future? I am asking in my work, “Where am I a bystander, and where am I complicit?” By using my practice to consider this dynamic, I can identify ways to be active and intentional when I operate in public life.

Where do you draw the line in manipulating imagery to fit the issue you are addressing?
RF: My process relies on location-based photography. I book the flight, I wrangle the gear, I wait sometimes hours or days for the right moment. I’m not a purist, but the one thing I always do is work with my own images, even for reference images when I’m creating a painting. Sometimes I need to create a painting or mixed-media work because the image file won’t hold up technically as a strong print, yet I still need to manifest the concept. In that case, I draw from my photographic record of the moment and “manipulate” the image with scissors, sculptural tools, software, or paint.

I wish I could convey the weather, the smells, the accents, the fatigue, and other aspects of the adventure to the viewer. Even when I’m sourcing archival images, I will have spent extended time with the community I’m working with. There’s just no substitute for genuine experiences. There’s a misconception that photography is a “flat” medium. Nope! It’s a fully sensory, highly active pursuit to chase down the right pictures. By the time I sit at the computer or go into the darkroom, I’ve built up a solid, intuitive vision for how I can authentically (albeit subjectively) approach the subjects in my work.

If you could go back in time, what advice would you give yourself as an emerging artist and photographer?
RF: I would give myself the mantra that I now pass to others: Artists are Problem Solvers! These words give me tremendous confidence when I’m looking for a way forward in a new or difficult situation. The same way an artist can learn a new tool or new process or new way to combine materials, we can take on the other challenges of an art practice like studio management, marketing, writing, and finding balance. These hurdles are unavoidable, but trust in your creativity to handle them! Oh, and find a gaggle of art pals to meet with regularly. Their experience and enthusiasm will keep you going when you’re stuck, and you get to do the same for them.