Larry Chatman

Larry Chatman-Artist Resume: Click HERE to download in PDF format

I  was born in St. Louis , Missouri in 1951. I graduated from Beaumont High School in 1968 and entered SIU-Carbondale that same year. I was in the college prep programs in my high school but was very much unsure whether I was college material, as the phrase went. Growing up black in the 1950’s and 60’s put a lot of doubt in my mind about my innate abilities. I entered SIU as a pre-med major to please my mother. She relished the prestige of having a doctor in the family. I did poorly my first 2 years due to the lack of passion, too much extra curricular activity, and fear. I was one of very few black faces on campus. I dropped out of school in May of 1969, returned to St. Louis and got a job in a paint factory. I intended to return to college at some time in the future, but not until I knew what I wanted to do or be. During this year away from college I discovered photography. I had never considered any art form as a possible career, I new nothing about art. I had never taken an art class in high school or anywhere else. But I knew this was right. I had no idea what an artistic voice was, but making photographs fit like an old jacket, molded to my form through years of wear. It was comfortable, and I knew it was right. I re-entered SIU-Carbondale as a Photography major in 1972 and graduated in 1974. I hadn’t found my voice but I was learning my craft. In 1975, I entered the Graduate program in Photography at Ohio University in Athens , Ohio and graduated in 1980. In 1976, I was offered and I accepted a teaching position at the Milwaukee Area Technical College . This allowed me to fulfill my goal to teach and I could finish my MFA in absentia.

Milwaukee gave birth to my artistic and social voice. I began photographing in black bars in the poorest neighborhoods in Milwaukee . I was fascinated by the disparate objectives of the young men and women in these places. They were young men and women in their late teens and 20’s. They were undereducated, underemployed and had given up on the system that offered education as a means to a viable and productive future. For some reason they had rejected it. The women were mostly looking for Mr. Right, a man to save them from their loneliness and poverty and lift them to a higher plane. Most of the men were looking for someone to bed. It was obvious to me that their needs were in conflict. I photographed this inter-play for 10 years. This body of work was nationally recognized. I gave many lectures at colleges and universities around the country. My photographs were exhibited at major venues such as the Milwaukee Art Museum , Madison Art Center , East Side Gallery in New York , at the National Conference of the Society for Photographic Education, and many other lesser venues. Also, images from this body of work have been published in American Photographer, Art Muscle, Framework, Wisconsin Photographer, and other lesser-known publications. The Art Institute of Chicago, Milwaukee Art Museum , Doan Family Collection, and others have images of this work in their permanent collections.

Photographing in places where I continually witnessed people hurting one another both physically and emotionally took its toll on me. I became so affected by the sorrow I was witnessing that I could not continue the work. I took my last bar photograph in 1989.

I started to wonder what made my situation different from theirs. Why had I not given up as so many young black men and women had? Was the social fabric so fragile, that but for some quirk of fate, I could have been the subject of my photographs. This meant that America had failed in its promise to be just. There was something very wrong in America that gave young black people the message that they could not transcend their circumstances and thrive. This realization sharpened my social awareness and made me see the world I lived in through a new lens.

I continued to photograph but turned my vision to elements of form and light. I began looking at my personal space, my house, as a way of looking at myself. On some level I was processing the effects of the Milwaukee Bar series that I had internalized. I needed to find something beautiful, light, and open to balance what I had exposed myself to the past 10 plus years. The photographs of The House were in color, where the Milwaukee Bar series was all black and white. The photographs of The House were light and airy in deference to the Milwaukee Bar series, which was dark and heavy. The photographs of The House were often humorous where the Milwaukee Bar series was filled with tension and drama. I continued this work for about two years. Although the imagery was strong, the most important element of the work was that it served as a catharsis. It allowed me to go outside and look at the world again.

I continued to work in color and began traveling to Southern Louisiana to photograph. The experience of the Milwaukee Bar series and The House enabled me to bring the strengths of both bodies of work together as I began to travel and photograph in Southern Louisiana . I was able to bring my social conscience, sense of humor, and aesthetic sensibility together to create a body of work that spans about seven years. In Louisiana , I was struck by the abject poverty of the inhabitants while I found humor in the way they communicated and beauty in the way they addressed their physical spaces. A sign in Morgan City announcing the Shrimp and Petroleum Festival seemed most unappetizing. In Houma I photographed a vacant property that had two signs on a fence. The first sign read “Houma School Board Elections” the second read “For Sale”. Together they told me the election could be bought. Given the history of corruption in Louisiana politics, I was quite amused. I sought out unintentional associations of words and phrases because this was the voice of Louisiana : humorous and crude in an innocent way. The landscape offered oddities not of phrasing but of spatial placement and order. The landscape was beautiful in its openness, color, and absence of human affectation. Strangely, it was tragic by the same measure. The place was ageless. There was evidence of an attempt to tame and control this land, but one could see it had failed. A stringer of different colored plastic triangles on Highway 57 for “Miss Autemaunt’s Snow Cones” makes no sense against the backdrop of sugarcane in the distance, but it is beautiful. A lone red and white striped road barricade in the middle of an empty field makes one wonder what purpose it was meant to serve. Photographing in Louisiana enabled me to expand my questions from a focus on blacks to a focus on those forces that drive human beings. Questions like, why don’t people realize that sometimes their writings convey things they don’t intend? Why aren’t people more aware of the placement of objects in space? Why do most people not see the simple, accidental beauty in their own environment?

In 1999 I had the great fortune to travel to Florence , Italy . Florence is easily one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Although I love beautiful places, I have no desire to make tourist or promotional photographs of lovely places. There must be something of substance in association with that beauty to interest me in photographing. My current photography strives to combine the beauty, age, and political culture of Florence and other Italian cities in an effort to address the struggle of the individual against the power of the State, class, or position. People choose whatever form of communication available to them. The more power or the higher the position the more options one has. My interest is in the powerless, those without privilege. They do not control or have influence over what is covered on radio, television, or in the newspaper. Their voices and beliefs lie outside the established power structure. They warn, “Do not trust the press”, “Read the walls”, “Get the fascists out of the city”. They seek to serve the public. Throughout history, thousands of peasants, slaves, and those marginalized in other ways, must have made similar warnings and statements of conscience. The struggle never ends; it is a question of who speaks to whom and how. It is a question of authority and license.

My images embrace a formalistic structure and classic beauty by design. I want the viewer to find what they initially see as lovely and embraceable. I want them to experience the sweet and sour balance I have created in my images. Finally, I want to acknowledge and bring legitimacy to those who lack access to approved channels. My work is not about Italians; it is about people. It is as much about the men and women I photographed in the bars of Milwaukee as it is about Italian dissidents.