Carol Golemboski – Psychometry

Copyright 2016 Carol Golemboski

Photographer: Carol Golemboski (b. Shreveport, Louisiana – resides outside Denver, CO)

Publisher: Flash Powder Projects

Essay: Shirley Jackson

Text: English

Hardcover book, embossed cover, duo-tone printing, Smyth sewn binding, captions, printed by EBS, Verona, Italy

Photobook designer: Jordan Swartz

Notes: Golemboski’s monograph of intricate manipulated photographs investigate nostalgia, loss and impermanence. The manipulated prints use an old school Black & White wet-print technique; a mask that is hand-scribe by the photographer to modify her photographic “reality” during the print making process. Her marks are a mash-up of careful delineated lines, scratches, letters, and drawings, which are similar to a digital layer mask in Photoshop. Frequently these masks are pin-registered to the printing paper to ensure precise line-up of the mask with the projected negative. A few of her intricate velum masks are included within the book in perfect alignment with the corresponding print. The effect is to lift the vale on the process that results in the final print. I find the velum’s layers as intriguing as the final print object.

Regarding the book’s title, Golemboski states “In Psychometry, arrangements of old objects in dilapidated spaces serve as metaphors for human emotions and psychological states. The term “psychometry” refers to the pseudo-science of “object reading,” a purported psychic ability to divine the history of objects through physical contact. The objects in these pictures seem haunted. They are designed to transcend their material nature and evoke the mysterious presence of past.”

Personally I have found myself  attempting “object reading” of artifacts of the past; a found photograph, family hand-me-down, or perhaps an old structure that I feel inclined to touch, as though my touch will reveal something of the object’s past. Subliminally I think Golemboski’s photographs connect with me in a similar fashion; that when gazing at her visual poems that I might actually connect with some essence just beyond my comprehension.

In turn, the viewers reading of these hand-altered photographs is as layered as the resulting images, some initially appear to be an easy read, such as Safe house, below, while others are a more complex and ambiguous. In some images the marks attempt to obscure the identity of the object or its external context while in others the marks appear to clarify, instill or attempt to add a layer of meaning. The juxtaposition of found objects with her subsequent inscribed marks creates very magical and beguiling works of photographic art.

Cheers