Immune Media's Questions for Brad Carlile:


1.  What's "Tempus Ingognitus?"  What's the purpose of the project;  Why is it of value?

"Tempus Incognitus" means unknown time.  It is analogous to Terra incognita or those areas of a map that have not been mapped or documented.  I think we need to question our assumptions of time and space for a deeper understanding.

Tempus Incognitus records the day's transitional times concurrently existing. These are images of hotel rooms that simultaneously contain moments from the past and present. Cubist's paintings depict a single landscape from different perspectives at the same time. In Tempus Incognitus, I photograph a single interior from same perspective at different times.

These interiors are borderline hallucinatory environments that locked in space with no clear sense of time. Time and space fade in and out and planes bleed into one another.

In normal still photographs any change is softened, rendered as a blur, and detail is lost. I use a time-intensive technique that captures the details and emphasizes change in vivid colors. The colors are created by an time-intensive technique in-camera and on-film with no digital creation or digital manipulation.

I print large 30x40 to 40x64...The large scale enhances the impact of the colors while intriguing details of the images draw one into an intimate distance to explore.  I like art that impacts the viewer both from across the room as well as under very close inspection.

One way of describing Tempus Incognitos is… they are Edward Hopper interiors will James Turrell's colors with David Lynch directing to give one a slight sense of uneasiness.

2.  How long have you been working on this project?  How many 'rented rooms' are depicted?  How do you choose the rooms?  Are they in other countries?  Do you tell the 'owners' that you're doing photos?

I've been working on this particular series since 2007.  I've been using a similar technique for a variety of series over the past 10 years.

Light, time, space, and emotions are the driving forces behind many of my series.  I create unusual colors as a seductive factor to draw one in.

The hotel rooms in Tempus Incognitus are rooms that my wife and I have stayed in various places around the world. Although you'll notice, by in large, there is very little clutter or personal items in the rooms.  I want the images to be almost as "de-personalized" as the anonymous rooms themselves.

In our global economy many of these rooms are very consistent and provide few clues to where they are.

3.  What's the first time you ever got paid for doing photography?

My mom was a newspaper reporter.  After school sometimes I would spend my time waiting for her in the darkroom at the paper with the photographers.  Later we built a home darkroom.

In terms of the first money I received, when I was 13 years old I won $20 at a local photography contest.

I was hired at 14 years old to take photos of 100 bank employees for a newspaper ad.  I developed all film at my home darkroom which worked great.  Two months later, I was then hired to shoot their Christmas party.  I made a mistake with my flash but only learned this after I developed film at home.  Due to my mistake, I had to learn to fix the film after processing by using an "intensifier" to improve the negatives.  Important lesson: Don't panic- just learn what you need to do in order to fix your mistakes.

4.  How much Photoshop is too much?

When it looks like bad chainsaw art.

As with any tool it depends on what one is trying to achieve, the ideas one is trying to express, and in the case of art if there is process one is holding oneself to in order to maintain some expression or idea.

Photoshop is a tool, like any tool on its own is does not create art.  Shouldn't be heavy handed unless heavy-handed is your message.  But in most art, being ham-fisted with your messages doesn't usually work well.  Whispering can be louder than shouting - try that in your next argument.

5.  Now that everyone's a photographer, (with Flickr, etc) will professionals survive?

In every human pursuit there are qualitative differences.

With email everyone is a writer.  Look how much email has improved literature in the past several years :)  Said another way, not everyone who can rhyme will be a poet, and even fewer of them will ever get paid.  Same with photography.

In our contemporary society, professional life is tough in every creative field right now.  With digitization, everything is seen as free by everyone.  "Why pay I can just look it up online or download…"

But every free website, every shared-copyrighted-file download hurts the creators of the content.  I love music, so I actually own all 5500 songs in my iTunes library.  

How do you support artists? ...or is that the responsibility of "someone else"?

6. Would you rather:  Have to make chainsaw art for a living OR only be able to see in "James Turell colors" for the rest of your life?

I think I'd rather live only seeing James Turrell colors for the rest of my life.  There is amazing subtlety  in the transitions in color and the geometries are wonderful.  My mind could take me anwhere in those environments.

Plus, I'd probably hurt myself doing badly conceived and executed chainsaw art.

7.  How in the WORLD did you acheive this without Photoshop?

I use Fuji Provia 100 & 400 (slide film).  These are done with multiple exposures (3 to 7) that are taken hours or days apart.  The exposures range from 1/250 sec to 128 seconds.  Since between exposures it requires having the camera on a tripod the logistics are sometimes tricky.

Brad Carlile is an avid traveler, climber, and photographer.  Each interest has translated into professional success-  Brad has published extensively on each subject, exhibited internationally, and amassed an impressive life-list of foreign destinations.

Countries where Carlile has climbed and photographed include Yemen, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Namibia, Ghana, Burkina Faso, India, Zimbabwe, Botswana, China, Morocco, Jordan, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Egypt, Russia, Ireland, Guatemala, and many locales in Western Europe.

Brad's work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art Rio de Janeiro, a solo show at Galerie Maurer in Munich Germany, and in Austria, Qatar, Germany, and China.  Since 2005 he has won 11 photographic awards including Prix de la Photographie Paris (Px3), International Photography Awards (IPA), and last year's Hearst 8X10 Bienniel.

To see more of Carlile's work, click HERE.