James Welling American, 1951-
James Welling first became known for his project Diary of Elizabeth C. Dixon, 1840-41 (1822-72)/Connecticut Landscapes (1977-86). As the title suggests, Welling took for his subject a young woman's 19th-century travel diary, making intimate closeup photographs of pages filled with handwritten script, desiccated leaves, ferns, and other mementos. This retrospective use of photography, as a means to invoke the past by providing an allegorical distance in the present, characterizes his approach to the medium.
Irony and humor are also common elements of Welling's photographs. For a series begun in the early 1980s, he made small black-and-white images that suggested the jewel-like physicality and believability of a daguerreotype. Upon closer inspection, the works revealed themselves to be nothing more than crumpled aluminum. The visual pun, when realized, prompted viewers to recall the tradition of landscape photography and simultaneously retain a distance from the subjects. His Railroad Photographs (1986-91) and Architectural Photographs (1988-90) invite similar examinations of photography's technical preconditions for representation of space as they are rooted in Renaissance perspectival traditions.
Welling (born in Hartford) studied at Carnegie-Mellon University (1969-71) and received a B.F.A./M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts (1974). He has numerous publications and has exhibited throughout the United States and Europe. Welling lives in New York. A.W.