Interview: David Welch

DAVID WELCH: MATERIAL WORLD

One photographer’s depiction of contemporary American Western culture.

Hazel McCoubrey – editor of Hound Magazine.

Shopping Totem © David Welch

David Welch is an American photographer based on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, USA. Welch’s most recent work is a series of fourteen images called Material World. The series is made up of images of numerous totem pole structures created using objects Welch associates with consumerism and mass consumption, major issues within contemporary Western culture.

Welch explains the theory behind the recurring totem structure that appears in his photography; “the totem is a universal symbol, but the totem pole is more specifically associated with North America. The method of stacking objects is supposed to represent a vertical narrative or social biography. Traditionally, totem poles are used to tell the story of a tribe or of a lineage so I thought it was a clever format for me to use for a contemporary Western culture biography.”

Plastic Totem © David Walch

We conduct a Skype interview from his studio in Massachusetts, he gestures behind him to the piles of objects he has been ‘hoarding’ (although he’s keen to state that this phrase is not suggestive of some kind of psychological disorder) for his future work. “I have an idea for a totem and then I begin collecting for it. For the image with the televisions I went to a recycling plant. Some of them worked very well, they just weren’t the latest and greatest of televisions so people had discarded them, which is depressingly wasteful.”

One image maker Welch cites as an inspiration is Chris Jordan “Jordan takes startling environmental statistics concerning American consumption waste and other issues. He creates images that he hopes have a bigger impact on the viewer than the statistics alone may have when presented purely as numbers.” For example, each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use in America); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of American can consumption) and so on.

Beer Can Totem © David Walche

“Jordan’s work inspired my subject matter but through reading and research I stumbled upon the idea of the totem pole. It seemed the perfect structure through which I could convey the same ideas of consumerism, consumption and the negative aspects of them but also create a social biography with a contemporary narrative.” In contrast to Jordan’s work, Welch aims to take a more light-hearted approach to such gloomy subject matter and is keen to incorporate what he states as ‘a sense of absurdity and humour’ in his work. There’s a playfulness to Welch’s images such as ‘Toy Totem’, an image of a child’s radio flyer wagon piled high with colourful toys and ‘Burger Totem’, seems reminiscent of a combination of Dutch still-life and Martin Parr (yes, imagine that!).

Burger Totem © David Walch

The sculptures photographed within Welch’s work are impressive as structures alone and, despite his adamance that he is a photographer rather than a sculptor, claims that all but ‘Car Culture Totem’ were created by himself. “Car Culture Totem is the only composite image. I shoot 4 x 5 or large format film, the other pictures were all shot on 4 x 5 and scanned digitally. The other totems are all actual, self-constructed sculptures. The car totem image came about because I wanted to do something with cars and as I was at graduate school I didn’t have the resources to do it myself, so I appropriated a piece. The car sculpture existed outside of Chicago, they tore it down but it still exists in photos. At the time I was in a graduate school argument that photos were ubiquitous objects similar to cardboard boxes or plastic bottles. It fits the Material World project conceptually and visually but it is the only one I did not build myself. The image is a montage that I created through my own photograph of a highway expansion project and a photo of the car sculpture.”

Car Culture Totem © David Walch

Why is it that Welch does not see himself as a sculptor? “The totems are physically standing sculptures but there is an element of manipulation that ensures their existence only within photography. It is subtle, they could stand free but the original concept was to have the images serve as mirrors. I wanted to preserve the sculpture only within photography for use on gallery walls, and I wanted to approach the subject as a photographer rather than a sculptor. I’d never consider myself a sculptor.”

Neither has Welch seen himself as just a photographer, it was only after completing a degree in Economics that Welch began to study art. Welch’s academic background lead to his creation of Material World; the product of hours spent reading in the library. “My professors were concerned that I was not producing much photographic work but my research set up the foundations for a completely different type of photography for me.

”That’s advice I’d give to starting out photographers – research. The pivot for me came after doing a lot of research and learning the history behind the medium but also being open to different mediums of work. Two of my favourite photographers are Andreas Gursky and Vik Muniz. I loved Muniz’s refreshing approach to photography because it was photo-centric but he never really considered himself a photographer. He used photography as a tool to document and this was freeing.”

What about any other contemporary practitioners that are inspiring? “A lot of people that are using Photoshop as a way to create new types of photography. I love Thomas Jackson’s work. I’m envious of those who can pull off traditional documentary photography because I don’t feel like my photography fits that mainstream mould, there’s a limited audience for my work.”

So, what’s next for Welch? “I’ve spent the last few months accumulating objects like computers and more plastic and stuff [references paraphernalia in the background of his studio]. I want to polish the series off at about 20 images. I want Material World to be a project I can branch off from. In the future I want to do work that is based within a public space and get photographs with a little more human interaction. That’s the ultimate goal. For now I feel compelled to keep making the totems and expand on the series more.”