Artist Statement
My work tends to come out of personal experience and is often a way of working
out my own fears and angst. That is a fairly common artistic urge, but I think that
the artists’ photobook form is probably the most intimate and perhaps the most perfect
form for presenting these concerns. The viewer holds a book with his or her two
hands, a solo and intimate viewing experience, a dialogue between a single person
and the artist photographer.
In addition to being a great vehicle for communicating directly to an audience,
artists’ photobooks have the wonderful advantage of being time-based like video and
film. Static pictures on a wall seem an impoverished way of making an artistic
statement after one works with sequence, rhythm, movement, translucency,
narrative arc; the list goes on and on. I know I am biased: I have been in love with
books ever since I was a small child, but the medium is so rich with possibilities
that it is hard to go back to working any other way.
Process Statement
Even though the narrative content is usually personal, I am also very interested in
process, and that also figures into my work, specifically the mechanics of various
photo-mechanical and print media such as offset, HP Indigo, inkjet and screen
printing. I love ink on paper.
PHILIP ZIMMERMANN is an artist and teacher. Since 2008 he has been a professor at the School of Art at the University of Arizona. He studied architecture and fine arts at Cornell University where he received a BFA in 1973. He earned his MFA in Photographic Studies at the The Visual Studies Workshop/SUNY Buffalo in Rochester NY in 1980. He taught at the School of Art+Design at State University of New York at Purchase outside NYC for 24 years and is a Professor Emeritus there. Although working in various media, his preferred form is the photo bookwork. He publishes his and other's work under the Spaceheater Editions imprint. He has received a National Endowment of the Arts Individual Fellowship and two New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowships among other awards. He was on the Board of Printed Matter in New York City for five years. His work is in many museum, library and individual collections including The Museum of Modern Art, Yale University, Harvard University, the Biblioteque Nationale, The Victoria and Albert Museum, The Getty Museum and many others.
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