Eric T. Kunsman

Three years ago, shortly after moving back to the Philadelphia area, I brought a group of my photography students from Mercer County Community College to the Eastern State Penitentiary on a field trip. It was a great photographic site. The reports I had heard about the architecture of the facility were definitely true, and the light and feeling of abandonment really gave off a sense that the Penitentiary might still be inhabited by ghosts or spirits. But there are a lot of abandoned spaces like that, so my first trip to the site would probably have been my last if I didn’t return to Philadelphia on a completely different class trip a few weeks later – this time, as a student. On that trip, one of my University of Arts professors, Heidi Kyle, introduced us to the American Philosophical Society’s conservation lab. Almost as soon as we entered the conservation lab, I noticed three books titled ‘Eastern State Warden’s Logbook.’ I opened it idly…and then spent the entire visit pouring over its pages. The Warden’s entries brought the Penitentiary to life for me. Through his words, the space now felt inhabited and connected to deep emotions – infused with new meaning. Though his writing is detached, the warden clearly got to know the prisoners far more personally than you would expect. The logs include details about prisoners’ families, whether they could read or write, whether they felt guilty about their crimes, whether they were penitent. While my photographs from the earlier visit captured a lot of the physical presence and feeling of the Penitentiary, it was the writings that started to, literally, flesh out the functional and human effects of this altruistic, but ultimately disastrous, Quaker experiment with reforming criminals. On that day, the genesis for this show clicked. I started returning to the Penitentiary. During each trip it was at least a half hour before I could start photographing. I found myself instantly reflecting on some of the Warden’s words, wandering through the space, and rediscovering things through his eyes and his reflections. In Thou Art…, Will Give…, I hope to offer some of the atmosphere experienced by prisoners when the Penitentiary was active. This exhibition attempts to capture some of the story, energy, and the sorrows of this remarkable space. Actual photographs of entries from the Warden’s 1800s logbooks have been blended with my photographs of the Penitentiary, to give a historical sense of both the prisoners and their treatment at the Penitentiary. Photographs with text overlaid are offered to allow the viewer just a hint about the presence of individual prisoners. I am hoping that through these images and text, visitors can share some of the sense of loneliness, hopelessness, and desperate search for redemption that drove so many of those spirits still trapped within the walls of Eastern State. I continue to visit Eastern State, because this project feels somehow incomplete. The Penitentiary is a massive space, and it hints that it has many more stories that need to be told. So, guided by the Warden – a man or men who died many years ago – I’ll keep trying to capture those stories still trapped in the crumbling walls of Eastern State Penitentiary. -- Eric T. Kunsman, April/2005

Peripheral Visions I try to portray the landscape as I observe it within the moment that I am first discovering the subtleness of the area. We choose our experiences in life, and I am only trying to portray those experiences I have chosen, with an audience. I choose a part of the landscape that I have experienced and try to express what I felt was most influential about that particular scene. My personal experience alters these landscapes and therefore changes the way in which observers can view them. Observers of these photographs are looking at the scenes through my eyes and experiences, as well as pulling their own experiences from these photographs. I often observe a scene and look for a composition that fits within my personal vision of stretched lines, forms, compositions, as well as spectral sensitivity. Many of the scenes have been altered by what I have chosen to capture within the frame and what I have decided to eliminate. The scenes have also been warped or distorted by my constant use of wide-angle lenses. This sense of capturing a limited yet distorted part of the landscape is what entices me to keep observing and capturing moments and scenes throughout my life. The use of the panorama helps to push the boundary of observing a scene even further than with my traditional photographic work. Many of these scenes cannot be observed by the naked eye because they extend beyond our peripheral vision. A few of the scenes are actually a full 360˚ and therefore cannot be viewed within a single moment, just as the photographs themselves are made up of multiple photographs stitched together. These photographs are a visual play because one would expect to return to these same locations and observe the same landscape. In a sense, this makes these altered landscapes appear to be typical panoramas, however these photographs are anything but factual.