Untitled, from the series Television Abstractions, 1968–1969, 1968–1969, Donald Blumberg, gelatin silver print
Courtesy of Donald R. and Grace Blumberg. Image: © Donald Blumberg
Transcript
[dynamic late 1960s inspired music]
Donald Blumberg 1968 was a very volatile year.
Female Narrator Martin Luther King was assassinated. Robert Kennedy was assassinated. The Vietnam war, and the protests against it, were in full swing…and Donald Blumberg was a photography teacher.
[music ends]
Donald Blumberg I was teaching in Buffalo at the time. The university was closed. The police had billeted the campus. There were no classes.
Female Narrator But there was an arts festival. In the middle of the show, a group of police came by with clubs, chasing students who had been demonstrating on campus. What Blumberg witnessed changed him as an artist.
Donald Blumberg The students were clubbed in a stairwell. That was, to me, a very disturbing experience and it changed my attitudes about what a photographer should be doing. I felt it was no longer appropriate to make very lovely images that would add to the history of photography, and the only thing to do would be to make photographs that would have some contribution to the anti-war movement.
Female Narrator For material he turned to the news.
Donald Blumberg There was a constant stream of very significant news events on TV.
Female Narrator Blumberg began by distorting the screen images to make them look more abstract. Then he photographed them, arranged the negatives on glass, and printed them.
Donald Blumberg The basic concept of the mosaic pictures are taking disparate parts, fusing them into a single image and presenting them as a single image which can be read in multiple ways.
Female Narrator By fragmenting the story, Blumberg questions the narrative presented by the news. Though the images were temporal, Blumberg wanted them to last.
[dynamic late 1960s inspired music]
Donald Blumberg The images were made to fix the period. To fix the trauma that the troops were experiencing and to fix the trauma that people were experiencing at home. They are intended for people not to forget.
[music ends]