Charles Badal

Artist Statement

The years in the early twentieth century leading up to and including WWI hold a particular fascination for me. During that time, great changes were underway politically, socially, culturally, and especially, artistically. Western Europe - particularly Paris, and in the U.S., New York City, were centers of a great movement against conformity within all facets of society.

Within the arts, such expressions were manifested in drastic moves against formalism, and towards a more abstract, modernist, aesthetic. With this, a way of making sense of existential ideals was introduced through various manifestos, of which were born such movements as Dada, Futurism, and Surrealism, among others. Within these writings, a new way of thinking about society, culture, and the arts emerged.

At the same time, rapid advances in industry and an embrace of science-based inquiry, rationalism, and technology made possible great achievements in infrastructure, communication, and industrial production. With this was a sense of boundless energy, and hidden within, a sense of progress previously unimaginable or otherwise unachievable.

With the spirit of this time in mind, and with the intentional use of minimalist visual tools very much in keeping with the mindset of the day in photography, with its movement away from the artificialized effect of pictorialism toward a more literal aesthetic, my work here, as elsewhere, makes use of posture, pose, existing architecture and natural light to create a series of portraits that, along with several still life abstractions that incorporate elements of Dada, Futurism, and Surrealism, together offer a subtle acknowledgment of this period of uproarious societal and cultural rebellion.