Pradip Malde:
"These photographs are about things that can be terrible and terrifying. They are specifically about bodily and material loss, and about our heroic tendency to transcend immense pain and suffering, and sometimes to do so just moments before dying. The images are about modes of transition - from self-awareness to death and transformation (images titled Expiration and Absence. Transcendence.) The last title, ‘Absence. Transcendence’, describes a state when one may become absent as a person, but transcendent and significant as a spirit.

The images are all photographic still-lifes, made in front of the camera and without any digital manipulation. This allows me to render each piece with its own center of gravity, its own emotional stage. My intent is to have this work drill deep into the viewer’s being. It is to have it internalized rather than be perceived as a window onto some event occurring at a safe emotional and physical distance.

To do this effectively, it helps to shift away from the idea of the photograph as a ‘picture’ of something and think of these images as photographs of ideas. By seeming ‘unreal’, the images break through the photographic window and find a place within an imaginary space. The experience of looking at a photograph becomes discomforting as well as compelling. We are fascinated because the fabric of what we know first-hand is being threatened by glimpses of what we do not know. Reality opens up and begins to give us an indication of something beyond our direct realm of experience, something that eludes, but is about to include the ‘me’ and the ‘I’. It seems that what has been photographed is not what has been photographed.” Pradip Malde was born in 1957 in Arusha, Tanzania. Since graduating from the Glasgow School of Art in 1980, he has worked as a photographic artist and educator in Scotland and Tennessee. From 1980 to 1984, Malde lived on the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland. After receiving a bursary from the Scottish Arts Council, and initiating a research project with Dr. Mike Ware, of Manchester University, England, in the platinum palladium printing process, Malde moved to the greater island of Scotland. He was appointed Lecturer in Photographic Arts at Napier University, Edinburgh in April 1985. His first trip to the USA, also in 1985, ultimately resulted in a long-term involvement with the Imogen Cunningham Trust. This included making platinum palladium prints from Cunningham’s negatives, curating a number of exhibitions of her work in the USA and in Europe, and authoring the book "The Poetry of Form". This first visit also introduced Malde to Sewanee, TN and the University of the South, where he is currently appointed as Professor of Fine Arts.

Edward P. Davee:
Edward P. Davee has been making films in the Pacific Northwest since the age of 16. In 1987 he purchased a Pixel-Vision and a super- 8 camera and began combining film with experimental sound recording techniques.

In the ways that Vertov’s MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA simultaneously celebrates Russian Productivity and the language of cinema, so does Crowfilm, through its multimedia collages, mimic and capture the essence of it’s subject while never disguising the fact that this is film made by a man with a movie camera. Crowfilm is not just an attempt to display the beauty of crows, or to simply document them, but to transcend the boundaries of standard documentation, resulting in a deeper connection to, and understanding of the nature of the subject.

In Crowfilm Mr. Davee is often among the crows with the full intention of making them aware of his presence, the crows are then “performing” for the camera.

Mr. Davee said recently in a statement… ”Crowfilm was born from the idea of not just wanting to document a species in it’s natural environment, but to recreate that environment from scratch, utilizing the powerful, yet limited, tools of filmmaking. To me, the crow’s world is a black and white world, a scratchy, scrappy world where nature and industry collide. I wanted to put myself, as well as the viewer, in that world. I want everything that is seen and heard on screen to somehow mimic this dark and mysterious corvid existence… For the finishing touch, to thoroughly steep and simmer this cinematic stew, the crows themselves were brought in to mix the final ingredients, their own physical markings on the actual strips of film, dancing across the screen as a murder flaps darkly by.”

Crowfilm is a 20-minute black and white experimental short. It was shot on outdated 16mm film, digital video, hand-processed super 8 film, and Pixelvision. It has an original musical score and features, with permission, songs by Tom Waits (who called Mr. Davee personally pledging his support and admiration for Crowfilm) and Einstuerzende Neubauten. It has been recently been admitted into the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, NC., The International Short Film Festival in Germany, Kansas City Filmmakers Jubilee, Evora International Short Film Festival in Portugal, Reed College, Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival in Ithaca, NY., Durango Film Festival in Colorado, The N.W. Film and Video Festival in Portland, OR where Mr. Davee lives and is working on his next film about urban exploration.