10 Undeveloped Prints of New York City by Arthur Bacon
At The Bonnafont Gallery, San Francisco

(On view: An orange Agfa paper box, which has obviously been opened and used, with a Post-It note attached to it, bearing the title. The piece is framed.)

The object is as unfamiliar to the common person as it is familiar to the photographer. In the darkroom, photo paper boxes are often repositories of unexposed paper waiting to be used. They are also sometimes used to protect exposed paper before development or awaiting further manipulation by the photographer.

The fact that this fragile, used paper box might be the only barrier to discovering the truth of the title’s claim leads one to impulsively want to open it: is there, in fact, paper inside? Is it exposed or not? If it is exposed, then, are the pictures really of New York City? Does it matter? One feels like opening up the box and unmasking the truth, yet the mere fact that photo paper is light sensitive makes the whole impulse impossible to accomplish. Only by opening up the box under safelights and developing the paper (if there is any) would one find proof of the claim, yet the work as such would be destroyed, for it hinges on its existence as a suspended record of the photographic process.

The impossibility to ascertain what the box truly contains makes the presence of the prints material, not as simple recorded images, but rather, as a process within the context of a history: the taking of the purported photographs, exposing them, placing them in the box, etc. The work raises questions that lead to the reviewing of the object’s past (the method of its creation), as well as its future: Is the paper to REMAIN undeveloped? What would happen if the paper WERE to be developed? Viewing the work, one is confronted with the intentions of the artist and the processes he did or did not go through to make the piece. The agency of the artist is clearly marked in the choices made (the paper was deliberately undeveloped. The artist chose to present the box asserting the existence of undeveloped prints). The insistence on the photographic process by implication is quite unique, since process is not something that artists have worked to highlight in photography. Unlike painting, which in the past century continually questioned its own methods and techniques over content, photography as a medium, though questioning authorship and the concept of "truth", has not historically been involved in digging deeper into its technical nature. It is significant that the emphasis here is on a darkroom process which now finds itself on the defensive against the ever increasing popularity of digital media (both commercially as well as in the "Art World" where the newest and "hottest" thing is displayed over more mature work). Arthur Bacon underlines the importance that the traditional darkroom process and materials have to the ultimate meaning of the work. The light sensitive qualities of photographic paper are necessary to create the fragile, transitory, almost contradictory state of the hidden prints.

The work reflects upon photography, not just as process, but as a presence in society playing a certain expected role. Photographs are often popularly perceived as documentary records. By encasing the prints in a box, we are no longer faced with a visual assertion of "truth" as seen by a camera, but rather with doubts about its veracity, tripping the viewer out of comfortable preconceptions. Not only are the prints inside a box, we are further removed from the image by the claim that they are UNDEVELOPED. The image might lie on the surface of the emulsion, invisible to the eye. Instead of revealing its subject, the photographer hides it from view. Mr. Bacon has chosen to display the Agfa Paper box (a symbol of the Artist at work) as a finished piece. One recalls the excitement sometimes felt during the creative process: hoping that the project will become the best finished product one has ever created. The artist might be speaking to all of us of a suspended desire to produce a series of masterpieces and the inevitable doubts that arise in the process of creation.

The fact that the artist chose to present invisible images of one of the more famous cities in the world cannot be arbitrary. And why New York City? To the present observer, many different associations and images of New York may arise. Perhaps most people today would think of the events of 9/11. Is the artist loath to show images of an unspeakably traumatic nature? What is it that cannot or must not be revealed that is embodied by New York? On the other hand, New York also symbolizes the hub of culture, particularly artistic culture in the US and in the world (Since 1945). To many, New York City represents a glut and overload of images, events, and people and this Agfa box might contain the perfect testament to the sensory overload that causes many of us not to see what is there.

Aitana de la Jara, 2003