Joseph Minek

Joseph Minek crafts abstract photographs without a camera, pushing the boundaries of the medium. Manipulating photographic paper and chemistry, he produces arresting compositions of colliding color and form.

In Conversation with Friday Arts

Friday Arts

Tell us about your practice.

Joseph Minek
My creative practice is all about the possibilities of photographic material. I do not use a camera for any of the work that I make, it all deals with light and chemistry to create marks onto photographic paper. This mode of working has taken nearly 15 years to get to. I started working in non-representational or experimental photography during my last year of undergraduate school and I fell in love with the idea of using this material to create something that isn't a conventional photograph.

Are there certain themes that you return to?

The main one is process and construction. The idea of constructing an image by building it up in some way, shape or form. One of the things that I love about the processes that I use is they're always additive. I can never subtract, so once I go too far, the piece is over. It's all about a sort of layering of different colors or the different mark making and knowing when to stop. And a lot of times I don't know when to stop and pieces will get ruined because of that.

How do you know when a piece is done?

It's all a gut feeling at this point now. And that's something as advice for artists in your work and in life—trust your gut. There have been many pieces that I've made that I thought were perfect. And I would decide, oh I can add one more little thing here or there. And then the piece is just ruined. But I think the idea of failing and having failures is important. You have to learn from your mistakes and you have to fail a lot of times.

Do you consider your work non-representational or abstract? Is there a difference to you?

They both can apply to the work. I typically use non-representational instead of abstraction. I feel like with abstraction, you need to have some sort of imagery that you're actually abstracting or manipulating. Whereas these are not really abstracting anything, unless we call it the abstraction of materials. If we're looking at the pictorial space of the images, they're as non-representational as we can get without going into semantics.

How do you want people to experience your work when they live with it?

I make very bright, glittery pieces and I think that they're fun to look at. So, the first thing is aesthetics. And then also, the idea of the emotion that you get from a piece. There are some pieces that I have in my own personal collection that I look at and just laugh at because they're funny. But then others are more heartfelt and sincere. But when I make these pieces, there's no emotion in them to me. I personally believe that they are very cold documentations of a process, to have a conversation about what we constitute as photography.

In order to collect a piece and put it on the wall– it’s a big deal and not something that everyone does. You have to actually live with that piece. It’s something I think about with all of the work that I make. I'll hang it on the wall for a few weeks or months in my studio, and if at any point I grow unhappy with it, it gets put into a pile of rejected pieces.

I know from various collectors, the work can give them this uplifting feeling. And that just comes down to colors. And if we think about the idea of color theory and how that actually functions—

Did you study color theory in school?

I did study Albers and all the color theorists and I think about that a lot with my work. One of the things that is somewhat difficult with the creation of the color works is while I can make every single color, I can't make every single color together on the same piece. So there will be sometimes where I'll have yellow, green and orange that can go together, but I can't get a blue in there depending on the chemistry.

How did you find your way into making art?

That is a difficult one. I mean, it can start all the way back to adolescence. I really started to get into photography during my teenage years with my friends, skateboarding. I would film and photograph them on skate trips. Looking back, most of those photographs were really bad, because of being young and not knowing too much about photography. I wouldn't be using the right shutter speeds, or my focus would be off—they were not good images. But the love of documenting all of those experiences drove me to go further into photography.

What was the first time you picked up a camera?

The first, I was seven or eight, and my parents got me one of those cheap Polaroid cameras. Absolutely loved using that thing. When I got into high school, I was able to take a photography class. That's when I started to use my parents' old Ricoh 35-millimeter camera. And from there, I just sort of got hooked.

The first time being in an actual dark room, I think the only way to really describe it is magic. It’s one of the reasons that I still make the work that I do—this idea of the magic of photography and how we can take light and chemicals and have all of these reactions to actually make this imagery onto a piece of paper that we can then physically hold. And I love seeing my student’s faces when we go into the dark room and they can actually see the image develop in front of them for the first time.

Tell us about your formal photography training.

I went to three different schools for undergrad and all of them taught me completely different aspects of photography. I started at Cuyahoga Community College, where I now teach. Then I went to a commercial photography school, where I learned the majority of my technical abilities. I then transferred to a straight art school and it really opened my eyes to the possibilities of what I could make. During my last year at the Cleveland Institute of Art I explored the idea of experimental or non-representational photography. I began to see how I could use this material to create an image to speak about photography and not use photography to speak about the outside world.

I went to graduate school at Virginia Commonwealth University. At the end of my first year, they tried moving me into the Painting and Printmaking Department, because they didn't know how to talk about the work that I was making. But I stayed in Photography, and we figured out how to talk about the work.

Who were some of the artists that inspired you at that time?

A decent amount of the heavy hitters from experimental photography, including one of my favorites, the founder of photography, William Henry Fox Talbot. Also, Man Ray, Aaron Siskin, and Harry Callahan, and contemporary photographers like Adam Fuss, James Welling, and Marco Breuer. All of them were influential in the work that I was creating at the time. Not only photographers, I was looking at a lot of modernist paintings too.

Currently, I’ve been fortunate to connect with artists like Jerry Birchfield, who also lives in Cleveland, John Opera, out of Buffalo, and Vanessa Marsh, in California.

Do you think about your work being a kind of a refuge from how many images are in the world now?

I do sort of see it as a refuge. But at the same time, I love looking at photographs. I look at photographs all day, every day. Every once in a while, even over the past years, I decide, oh, I'm gonna try and take photographs. And I take photographs, develop the film or edit them on my computer, and then there's just sort of this empty feeling. I don't know what that is because I look at them and I just see a picture. With my current series, it leads to a conversation about the idea of photography and about the idea of making images and how images can be made using this material, even though this material is made for representational purposes.

I also think about the broader social context of photography being this democratic process, especially with the rise of smartphones. I love the idea of photography being a democratic medium that everybody has access to. But at the same time, I like to talk about the idea of photography or what photography is more so than using it to speak about the outside world.

What do you think the role of the artist is today?

In the simplest terms, it's to get a reaction or to get someone to start having a conversation. I believe that all art is about conversation in some shape or form. Sure, it's nice to look at on the wall. It will give you some sort of feeling or emotion. It will let you reflect inward. And you can also reflect outward with it.

When AI comes for us, what words will it use to describe your work?

Oh, I don't want AI to come for us, but it already has. Non-representational. Vibrant. Colorful. Photographic. Not a photograph.

What does Friday mean to you?

When I think of Friday, I think about my wife. We always play that Rebecca Black song in the morning as she's getting ready for work and we'll have a little dance party to it. And I love knowing that we get to spend the next two days together.

About the Artist

Joseph Minek lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his B.F.A. from the Cleveland Institute of Art (2011) and his M.F.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University (2013).

Minek’s work has been widely exhibited in the United States and internationally. His recent solo exhibitions include Rewind (2022, Von Lintel Gallery, Los Angeles), Photographic Works (2019, Gallery 1 of 1, San Jose, CA), and No Poetic Device (2017, Denny Gallery, New York). He has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including Gems from the Past 30 Years (2023, Von Lintel Gallery, Los Angeles), Lensless (2019, University of Louisville, Kentucky), and Mimeo Revolution (2015, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland).

Minek is the recipient of several grants including the Nasnadny and Schwartz Visiting Curator Award from the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (2017). His work is held in several public and private collections, including The Cleveland Museum of Art, the Rubell Museum (Miami), New York Presbyterian Hospital, and the Spall Art Collection in Germany.