New Abstraction 30 (1998), 1999

James Welling Biography

James Welling’s photography takes the process and nature of the medium as its subject matter. Coming to prominence in the late 1970s and early 1980s Welling’s work provides a critical deconstruction of photography and the techniques it entails. Moving away from the photographic traditions of opticality and pictorialism the artist uses simple objects ranging from pastry dough to crumpled aluminium foil to create photograms and architectural images with Polaroid and 4 x 5 cameras exploring the possibilities of abstraction.

Identified as an artist of “singular accomplishment” by the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Welling’s experiments with the medium and form of photography have cemented his importance in the history of American photography. He began his photographic career taking shots of Los Angeles architecture in changing lights and others of juxtaposed objects before moving on to the photogram technique he is most renowned and celebrated for. Welling has been included in numerous group shows and had a number of solo exhibitions internationally, a mid-career retrospective at the Palais des Beaus Arts in Brussels in 2002, and his work is represented in several public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. James Welling is also an associate professor of photography at UCLA’s School of the Arts and Architecture