Jerry Ulesmann - Untitled - 1969
In December 2010, a pair of Jerry Ulesmann silver gelatin prints were presented as a gift to me for my birthday from my wife Lynda Weinman to my surprise with complete & utter joy. One created in 1969 & the other created decades apart in 2001 as to get something from 2 differing times in his career.
Most look at the work of Jerry Ulesmann and, think it was all Photoshopped without question or hesitation. What most don’t know is that Jerry Ulesman doesn’t touch Photoshop to create his works. In fact the image posted above was made in 1969 years before Photoshop or home computers became common with image manipulation. Jerry Ulesmann does his magic in a darkroom with multiple enlargers, negatives, dodging, burning, amongst a large host of analogue tools & techniques to composite light upon photo paper to create his works one at a time through pain staking process that is not at all common with other. The negatives are all shot by Jerry and stored until he can concoct a fit between the multiple negatives to create his image. Because he makes each and every print by hand, he does not number the prints since they are all unique and slightly different from one another.
There are only a few moments in my life that I can point to that have profoundly changed my being. In 1977, one moment was by Star Wars – A New Hope. In the 80’s I came across the works of Jerry Ulesmann at the Crystal Court mall in Costa Mesa, California, and it opened almost void of stores however one of the empty shops featured the works of Jerry Ulesmann and the images he produced imprinted something so profoundly powerful into my mind that I had to dive into photograhpy myeslf. I had one extremely cheap enlarger I purchased from a Navy officer that was acquired after WWII in Japan. My father constructed a darkroom in his garage and I found myself following in the footsteps of Jerry Ulesmann to be humbling to say the least as image compositing was a rather difficult art to learn and achieve. Later in life I learned that Jerry had over 10 enlargers in which he would create assembly processes to lay the light down to composite his images and I have been doing it all wrong. The process led me into conceptual thoughts & eventually towards illustration & editorial illustration. I went to Art Center College of Design to learn Illustration & I still played with photos then.
Below is the 2nd image Lynda gave me.
Jerry Ulesmann - Meditation Mystery 2001
Later in life I encountered Illustration work by the likes of Matt Mahurin whom moved towards photography with Photoshop to create photo illustrations that blended the lines of painting / photography that reflected back towards Jerry for me. Matt also changed the game & further ignited my desire to create images.
So to receive this gift I was taken back to where some of the passions that drive myself & lynda.com. Sometimes the full circle only perpetuates itself to move further. I’m hoping to work with Jerry in the future & document his life if the stars align.
Jerry-Ulesmann - Untitled - 1969 | As it hangs at my home
Hint ** I like move stars **
Bruce Heavin 