Artist’s Statement
My interest in visual narrative grows out of a fascination with the ‘stories,’ both intentional and unintentional, conscious and unconscious, embodied in family snapshots and photo albums. My early works were often parodies of snapshots and used people and animals as primary subjects. By the late ‘70s however, I had become interested in making work that would be somewhat independent of a ‘central character’—the unifying device so common to most narratives across all strata of our culture. I began to work toward creating a visual meta-language capable of conceptualizing and articulating the slippery interface between our concepts of object and image. By the early ‘80s, I was using copy machines and collage techniques to fabricate my work. As the pieces grew in scale and complexity, I began utilizing a type of ‘field’ composition in which many individual elements were deployed over a relatively large area made up of several individual frames. The implied connections between elements created a flow that I conceived of as narrative, even though very abstract. I was finding parallels for these ideas in works of contemporary poetry, experimental fiction and cinema.
Most of the objects represented in those pictures were common—toys, tools, hardware, household objects, etc. That fact, in combination with the ‘photographic’ rendering of the copy machine, gave the works a degree of familiarity and realism. That realistic dimension was countered by an underlying emphasis on conceptualization, conveyed primarily by arrangements of elements that might suggest, for example, an exploded-view diagram, a hieroglyphic inscription, or a mathematical formula. The driving force behind these combinations was often a series of implied ‘translations’ of images into objects (or objects into other objects). For example, in Mag/Lab/Mow (1987) a photograph of the feet of a statue taking a step is ‘translated’ into a cluster of elements that include metal objects descending a stair-like structure, mazes, enlarged fragments of footprints and a bicycle pedal. In another piece, Three/Wave/Gaze, (1987), two photographs of a hand reaching into a pool of water are translated into a cluster of objects that include a hand clamp, a bundle of wires, a piece of wood with wave-like grain and an enlarged fragment of a fingerprint. Those objects in turn underwent further transformations. I conceived of that process as analogous to ‘chains of thought’ where simple objects or images are mentally projected into increasingly complex states, in which ‘the everyday’ can embody a personal cosmology.
My more recent work is made of individually framed sections, now of widely varying size. Some of these pieces are large, over 25 feet in length. Increasingly, relationships occur across the gap between frames rather than within them. Representational elements are more dramatically combined with abstract or non-representational elements. I continue to think of this work as an exploration of the dynamic between object and image, essentially the space of narrative, although currently the term ‘micro-narrative’ might be more appropriate. I believe that the relatively minimal quality of the current later pieces helps the work to exist on the fine line between ‘pure’ perception and formulated thought, between the implication of meaning and the seductive attraction of non-meaning.
Carl Toth
2005
Biography
Carl Toth (1947–2022) was a renowned artist, photographer, and educator whose career progressed the development of photographic art. His work synthesized contemporary literary trope, poetic expression, cinematic device and their concurrent theoretical underpinnings, conceiving a visual narrative language that expanded the expressive possibility of the medium and, with it, deepening our understanding of individual and collective ‘cosmologies.’ By embracing technological developments in image production throughout his career and investigating the significance of photographic methodologies, Toth’s work engaged and pioneered the transition from traditional photographic production to the digital age. As Artist-in-Residence and Head of the Photography Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art from 1972 to 2007, Toth’s commitment to an open, experimental approach to image making influenced and inspired generations of artists and academicians.
Toth received an Associate in Applied Science degree in Photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1968, where he studied with Beaumont Newhall. While in Rochester, he also participated in the Visual Studies Workshop with Nathan Lyons, where he encountered experimental photography and critical theory that was formative to his early artistic inquiry. There, Toth also developed a lasting relationship with Bob Heinecken while serving as his teaching assistant. He received a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1970, then a hotbed of literary thought, working with Charles Altieri and the poet Robert Creeley, amongst others. His studies there and his continuing interest in modern and contemporary literature, poetry and semiotics comprised a major influence in his conceptual approach to artmaking. He received a Master of Fine Art in Photography, also from SUNY at Buffalo in 1972, studying with Donald Blumberg.
After graduation, Toth was invited to join the Cranbrook Academy of Art, a prestigious graduate level art school outside of Detroit, where he served as the first Artist-in-Residence and Department Head of the newly founded Department of Photography. There, in addition to studio courses, he taught seminars that explored the relationship of literature, poetry, literary theory, and cinema to still photography and photomontage. He enriched this interdisciplinary approach by inviting renowned writer and theorist Alain Robbe-Grillet to lecture at the Academy, further developing the dialogue between photography, literature, film. Creeley, Altieri, and local poets George and Chris Tysh also presented workshops at Cranbrook during Toth’s tenure.
Inspired by the literary theories of semiotics and deconstructionism, Toth's early works employed alternative photographic techniques, including 8mm film strips and collage, to deconstruct and reassemble traditional photographic images. Through this practice, he playfully reveals a fluid dance between image and object, sign and signifier, transformation and meaning. Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Susan Sontag, Claude Levi-Strauss, Italo Calvino, Roland Barthes, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Rosalind Krauss, and Vladimir Nabokov were just some of the writers, theorists and critics who had a profound influence on his work and formed part of the curriculum for his students at Cranbrook. Over the course of his four decade career, Toth eventually adopted color and black and white copiers as his ‘cameras’ of choice, which enabled him to intensify his exploration of collage as a means of conceptual inquiry. He meticulously cut and reassembled objects and patterns to create conceptual landscapes and non-linear visual narrative relationships, merging technical skill with conceptual depth, mechanical reproduction with the handcraft of an artisan.
As an educator, Toth fostered creativity, experimentation, and critical thinking at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. He encouraged students to challenge conventional assumptions and explore interdisciplinary approaches; to use technical proficiency as a means of conceptual exploration; guiding them beyond preconceived notions surrounding photography and image-making, to engage critical reflection on their own work and creative process as well as that of others.
In 2022, Cranbrook Art Museum celebrated Toth’s legacy with the retrospective exhibition Carl Toth:Reordering Fictions, which was accompanied by a symposium including a curator's presentation and panel discussion.