During the Saint Mary's College fall 2024 art lecture on Monday night, artist John Steck Jr. highlighted his exhibition, “A Silver Memory,” which is currently featured in the Moreau Gallery at Saint Mary's.
A Baltimore-based visual artist and educator, Steck creates light-sensitive emulsion photographs that fade over time. He is also a senior lecturer and photography coordinator for the center for visual arts at Johns Hopkins University. In his lecture, Steck defined the focus of his work.
“I appreciate the ever expanding way of dealing with the photograph and how there are different ways of taking the banal object and turning it into something more mystical, more unique, more ephemeral,” he said.
Steck emphasized the connection of his work to the concept of memory.
“I started to really think about not only how these images have changed over time, but also the way that memory works in general,” Steck said. “The way that everything that we remember about something is ... a firing of things happening in our brain.”
Over the past 15 years, Steck’s artistic journey has evolved from traditional photography to experimental techniques. He now focuses on the fading process of photographs and how memory shapes perception. His work has been showcased in 20 states and five countries, with recent exhibitions at Bradley University and Yamaguchi University.
“His work explores our complex relationship with time, memory, and impermanence,” said Ian Weaver, director of the Moreau Gallery, who introduced Steck before the lecture.
Steck’s current collection is a compilation of several bodies of work he has presented in the past, the most prominent of which feature his photographs, which disappear over time. There are five different projects in the gallery.
Steck took a year and a half to develop his method to make the photographs fade. He said his interest in old photography has inspired the evolution of his work.
“There's something about holding these one-of-a-kind objects that you know for the most part these are the remaining memory of these people,” Steck said.
Steck described the contrast of his work against that of those early photographers.
“They were doing everything in their power to ensure that this image will last forever, whereas, in my practice, I welcome light's promise of eventual nothingness,” he said.
The nature of Steck’s discipline is ever-changing, but he is confident in the longevity of his field.
“I think it's always going to exist,” he said. “It may just be new materials and slightly newer methods that I have to get used to, but I've adapted to it. I know that some of these things will always exist. It's existed for 200 years almost now, it's not going anywhere.”
Steck’s gallery in Moreau Hall closes on Thursday, Sep. 26.
