Carl Zimmerman
"Carl Zimmerman" by Meredith Dault, Summer 2007, p. 86
Carl Zimmerman (a Hamilton, Ontario, native who lives in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia) makes photographs of imagined architectural spaces. He builds physical models, photographs them and then digitally manipulates the photographs, creating vast, impossible spaces. Richly toned and laid out flat on tables in the gallery space, the photographs read, at first glance, like historical documents—they feel very much like 19th-century architectural engravings— until you realize they can’t be because they’re all dated in the present. A closer look reveals that the buildings are set in huge, bleak, almost surreal landscapes, and their titles—such as War Memorial, Leeds, England and Unitarian Church, Manchester, England— want you to believe that these enormous, fantastic buildings have been plunked down in ordinary, working-class cities.
The exhibition “Landmarks of Industrial Britain” was set up in such a way that before you even encounter any of Zimmerman’s photographs, you meet his models: in this case, small, precisely constructed architectural spaces—things like highly detailed arches and domed roofs. Zimmerman’s works are clearly based in artifice, but it’s not a fact he’s trying to hide. Displaying the models as part of the artistic process is an important part of helping viewers better understand the work they are about to see.
The works themselves are convincing because they are so well executed, with buildings often depicted from both inside (the interior spaces are usually barren, sometimes with crumbling, ruined walls) and out. In almost all of the works, Zimmerman will include one or more tiny figures at the bottom of a cavernous space to give a better sense of the vast (if artificial) scale.
The overall effect of the photographs is both creepy and wonderful. They are images that affect on a gut level. The spaces they show us seem postapocalyptic— they’re bleak, lonely and eerily lit from unidentified sources. And while they also appear to be antique, speaking faithfully to us in neo-classical language, the message seems to be more about a desolate possible future.
These photographs are beautiful in their execution and imagined loftiness, but they’re also disturbing and lonely. You can’t help but imagine what it would feel like to stand alone in such a giant space, listening to your voice echo back at you.
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