MISSISSIPPI ARTIST CELEBRATES DEATH OF FILM THROUGH THE PHOTOGRAPHIC PROCESS OF �ROUGH EDGE PHOTOGRA

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) September 30, 2003 -- 1 October 2003



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE



Contact:

James W. Bailey

2142 Glencourse Lane

Reston, VA 20191

Phone: 703-476-1474

Cell: 504-669-8650

Email: jameswbailey@artroof.com



EXPERIMENTAL MISSISSIPPI ARTIST CELEBRATES THE DEATH OF 35mm FILM THROUGH THE UNIQUE PHOTOGRAPHIC PROCESS OF �ROUGH EDGE PHOTOGRAPHY� � INSPIRED BY FIRE AND THE SOUTHERN CULTURAL TRADITION OF THE FAMILY PHOTO WALL COLLAGE

As digital technology rapidly replaces conventional film techniques and equipment, including traditional 35mm film, an experimental artist from Mississippi resists the temptation to �go digital� and in a style worthy of a New Orleans style jazz funeral, actually celebrates the death of film.

Mississippi artist, James W. Bailey calls his violent method of photographic based artwork �Rough Edge Photography�. He buys damaged cameras in thrift stores and mutilates his film and prints. Lenses are scratched, holes may be punched in the film canisters with a needle, and prints may be burned along with the original negatives. �I push found and discarded equipment to the extreme. I like the radical imperfections, the accidental quality that can be found in mistreating the equipment, negatives and prints�, Bailey says. �I had come to believe that classic photography had become too weighted down by its own rules, conventions and practices. This combined with the impulse to rush toward digital made me want to explore 35mm film in a radically brutal fashion. �Rough Edge Photography� is the result of my wanting to hang on to film until the bitter end.�

Although Bailey�s radical experiments with conventional film photography would be considered cutting edge, he actually reached back to his Southern roots and a childhood experience in Mississippi for inspiration: �When I was eleven years old I witnessed a farm house burn down on property near my grandfather�s farm in Mississippi. Everybody nearby pitched in to try and safe the house and its contents. I managed to pull from the burning house a smoldering wooden box that contained a historic collection of family photographs. I took the burned and charred photographs out of the box and arranged them on the grass in a collage. It was the most haunting image I have ever seen. The charred remains of this image history of the generations of this family.� Bailey continues, �The collage that I created that day from those burned photographs reminded me very much of a tradition that every mother and grandmother practices in the south, the family photo wall collage. My grandmothers in Mississippi used to have these family photo wall collages in their homes were incredible. They would literally place hundreds of photos of the ancestral generations on wall and they could tell you everything about every person in those photos. When you viewed the collage from a distance, you saw this agitated mass image that had no specific reference point. But when you moved in close to it, you would see photos of recently born children next to a photo of an ancestor who was a Civil War Confederate Veteran. These were the primary inspirations for my current style of photography.�



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