Very Extreme, Maybe Even Hysterical, C-print

Dirk Westphal’s new solo exhibition Super Über opens at Mixed Greens gallery opens tonight. As part of his overall creative mission to document and explore the peculiar artifacts of modern-day consumer culture, the artist has been photographing fish for nearly a decade. With this new exhibition devoted to overbred fish purchased in New York’s Chinatown, Westphal brings his celebrated fish series to a close, using precise imagery to reexamine the dichotomy between nature and engineering. VMAN talked with Westphal about his obsession with fish, seascapes, and surfboards.

Simon Castets: Even though the works in Super Über appear decorative, putting such Chinatown-engineered fish under close scrutiny actually calls attention to their unnatural aspects.
Dirk Westphal: As a photographer, my interests lie in looking/seeing and using various techniques to help me make the act of looking/seeing pleasurable or provocative or in some way stimulating. And these are so much more than just fish—these fish are the product of human engineering, bred for mutation to look appealing to us. To me, that is the dark side. Some of these fish don’t have dorsal fins, making it hard for them to swim, and some have eyeballs only looking up, which is not good for their vision. None would last a second in the wild, and none look remotely the way their wild relatives do.

The aesthetic of these images is radically different from your previous work with fish, such as the series with shark fins placed in different places around the world. How do these series relate to each other apart from an interest in the ocean?
The shark fins photographed in various places around the world were a reaction to the people that asked, “Aren’t you afraid of sharks?” as a result of my surfboard-making project, which was a spinoff of the fish photography—we laminated pictures of the fish onto surfboards that we made. While the shark fin photos do look different from the studio fish series, I would say the are related because they employ the same sense of dark comedy, but also a sense of fun and enjoyment. In a larger way, they are all related because all the photographic work I do seems to fall into the “documentary” photography category. But that sounds so dry, so I use the European version—they call it reportage, and typically it is “street” photography, though not always. But it does tell a story.

The white backgrounds and crisp focus recall Irving Penn’s photographs of frozen foods, except that you are dealing with live material. Can you explain the way you proceeded?
The white backgrounds (or red or black) are visually exciting to me. Penn (one of my favorites) did it; lots of people do. But photographing fish in this way is more scientific to me than just a question of making it look good, which it does as well. It is about erasing any visual clutter or confusing elements.
Considerable technical knowhow goes into building special tanks, placing them on a white plexiglass set, balancing the foreground/background lighting in just the right way to make the water disappear without losing any detail on the fish—not to mention acclimating the fish to photography. It is a big studio setup, and I guess it goes without saying, but the fish just do what they do, so I wait for them to swim through my frame (as the camera is on a tripod), and then it is a question of editing. The titles are deliberately far-out as I employ a Burroughsian method for titling—I collect phrases/texts that I find somehow attractive or appealing. In the end I throw them up in the air and whatever sticks/works is what I use.

This exhibition will be your last with fish as its subject matter. What’s the next step?
The next steps are toothpastes, oil sheens, a series of images taken off the television, and also some work with blood.

Super Über is on view at Mixed Greens through April 18.

Dirk Westphal in his studio in New York City

KEYWORDS: art, Dirk Westphal, photography