Jeffrey Becom
American, 1953-

Full Moon, 2007
Tintype on copperplate, ed. 1/10
19 3/4 x 19 3/4 in. (sheet-sight) 33 x 33 in. (frame)

SBMA, Museum purchase with funds provided by Eric Skipsey
2007.45

COMMENTS

Jeffrey Becom comes to his art as a photographer and painter with formal training as an architect. For him these three pursuits ignite one passion: painted walls. The traditional painted façades of vernacular architecture around the globe offer this inveterate traveler subject and palette from which to derive his own artwork while he, in turn, documents their history, mystery and power. Paint then—and specifically color—is Becom’s life’s calling, whether he photographs, paints, or write books about painted color customs, myths and meanings.

For over three decades, Becom’s artistic sensibilities have stood squarely in the colorist realm. Becom has come to find his inspiration in ever-more remote places populated by indigenous, ritual-bound people whose architectural color springs organically from their history, geography and faith. He considers his photographs to be documentary: the colors, subjects and details are captured as found. He has long relied on traditional equipment and materials and printed using traditional wet darkroom techniques. Only very recently has he entered the digital realm and begun producing film-based images as pigment ink prints.

Becom is best known for his sensuous use of the silver bleach photographic process to transform architectural imagery into lush, painterly, colorist studies. Similar architectural subjects rendered by Becom in watercolor or in oil and wax on wood panel, as well as his plein-air oil and wax landscape paintings on canvas, are equally respected. His newly released contemporary tintypes are a radical departure. Utilizing straight photography, wet darkroom techniques, and traditional tintype chemistry, Becom is producing small limited edition, handcrafted images—some hand-colored—for two series: Retablos and Full Moon.

The Full Moon series is produced from an anonymous, antique 20x20 inch paper negative discovered in an Arizona thrift shop. When Becom saw an early silver gelatin test print, he immediately recognized that this image of the moon would make a perfect subject for a large-scale tintype, a medium especially well suited to reveal the rich blacks and subtle, detailed grays of the moon’s topography. Becom also appreciated the fact that the paper negative itself was contemporaneous with the era of tintype photography. With the paper negative owner’s permission, long-time darkroom collaborators Becom and Corey Allen made a contact positive and then used this to produce tintypes on copper. Each of the ten plates in this series is unique because the tintype process is inherently unpredictable, resulting in variations of color, density and surface imperfections, all of which add to its handcrafted finish as well as its individuality within the series.

- Jeffrey Becom / Bio, Catherine Couturier Gallery, Houston, 2012
http://www.catherinecouturier.com/artists/jeffrey-becom/bio/