Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Cardinali.
Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
My first love of art was drawing and painting, which I entered Purchase College to study. Somewhere along the line I switched to graphic design, thinking it was a more practical, employable approach. I was taking photography courses as electives, and at a certain point realized I was drawn to this more than anything else I was doing. I changed my concentration shortly thereafter.
Even as a college student, I knew I wanted to teach someday. But I felt it was important to first pursue photography on my own terms while also making a living. The period after school was formative in figuring out my relationship to what I do, and how to build my life around it. I rented a darkroom for several years in NYC and divided my time between pictures and working various jobs. I became hungry to spend all my time on photography and applied to the MFA Program at MassArt. My wife and I moved to Boston and came to love our new city, remaining after I earned my degree.We just recently relocated to the North Shore, since I teach at the University of New Hampshire and the move somewhat eased the commute.
Please tell us about your art.
I became drawn to the process of photographing and working in the darkroom during college, especially once I began using a view camera. This is a large box camera anchored to a tripod. You need to go underneath a cloth to see and focus the image, and it produces a negative that’s 8×10 inches. I fell in love with how the size of it fostered a slower, more contemplative way of looking; creating a record of the actual world became more exciting to me than painting it.
I just published my first book, LOST Boston. Images of the city, my family, and my domestic space are all woven together in it. I’m interested in the relationship with a place, beyond its geographical description. I also look at how people interact with the land throughout the city. I’m trying to emotionally access spaces that are used and managed at both a municipal level and an individual one.
In another recent project, I’ve been photographing the Charles River. The river and the landscape change dramatically along its 80-mile stretch. There’s history embedded in these images, although I approach it in a lyric form more than as a social document. The work that’s most alive for me speaks to our intellect through our emotions, a kind of enlargement of feeling through the wonder of deliberate, prolonged looking.
Given everything that is going on in the world today, do you think the role of artists has changed? How do local, national or international events and issues affect your art?
I think the role of artists has always been to reveal something about ourselves and our world. Artists offer reflection on what it’s like to be living on this planet. The technology changes, so I think the tools we use to navigate and communicate are in flux. We are in a moment of inequalities rising to the surface and being reckoned with. My subjects tend to be immediate and local and revolve around everyday things. I suppose in a way it is an attempt to find common ground. We all love something, we all hold someone dear. It’s easy to lose that in the news, but I feel responsible to insist upon it in the everyday things I do and make.
How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
There are a few copies remaining of the book, which can be purchased through the publisher, Kris Graves Projects (krisgravesprojects.com). There’s work on my website at cardinaliphoto.com. I’m on Instagram @mikecardinali. I’ll also be including some new work in a group show this fall in the Museum of Art at UNH. I just completed a week-long Instagram takeover for Treat Gallery NYC, called Treat America Project (@treatamericaproject). It’s a fun project, in which one photographer from every state is selected to share work about their home turf for a week. It runs the full year, and there will be an exhibition of these images in NYC early next year.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.cardinaliphoto.com
- Email: michael@cardinaliphoto.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/mikecardinali/
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/michaelcardinali
- Other: www.krisgravesprojects.com
Image Credit:
Pia Cardinali
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