Artist Statement
In Empire of Glass, I photograph the forgotten fragments of Louis Comfort Tiffany's stained glass that were thrown away during the Great Depression. The glass was rescued by my grandfather, collector Vito D'Agostino, during the liquidation of Tiffany Studios in 1933. Discovering my grandfather's boxes of glass in my basement, I illuminate Tiffany's raw materials into abstract photographs of biomorphic form and gestural rhythm. Iridescent whirls preserved within the glass juxtapose with detritus on the surface of the glass, forming a synthesis of decay and rebirth. Process Statement
I use each piece of glass like an individual film negative. Favrile glass is dichroic (literally translated: “two colored”) meaning it absorbs and emits light in an almost endless variety of possibilities. I am able to photograph and print many different kinds of images from the same glass negative, depending on the intensities, kinds, and angles of light employed from 360 degrees. In this sense, light itself is the chief protagonist, and since it is naturally invisible, I use the glass to trap light and give it a viscosity, density and texture from within.

 

 

John D'Agostino is an artist who interrogates the expanded possibilities of the photographic medium, and its intersection to painting and collage. Writing on the threat of abstraction to the rhetoric of the sublime, of late, his practice has focused on the stained glass of Louis C. Tiffany. His work is collected by institutions such as The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and The Harry Ransom Center, among others.

 

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