When it comes to the technical skills and equipment essential for scanning, printing, and digitally post-processing images, “inclusivity” is probably not the first word to pop to mind. Unless enrolled at a university or part of an organization that houses the requisite tools, artists’ access is often limited or cost-prohibitive. That’s why at Latitude Chicago, a nonprofit community digital lab, inclusivity and access are central to its entire mission and lodestars for the diverse range of artistic practices that rely on its resources.
Latitude invites artists from a wide array of creative backgrounds who put the facilities to good use. “In the 12 years of our organization, the image-making landscape within the art world continues to change, and most people make photographs for their practice regardless of identifying as a photographer,” says executive director Colleen Keihm.
Figures, 10 x 10"
Collage with Monograph pages, Photograms, and Archival Inkjet Prints
Since its inception, Latitude has welcomed artists who work across myriad mediums. “Though we were founded by photographers,” Keihm says, “I'm interested in being a resource for all types of media.” Several of these artists incorporate collage into their work, exploring a diverse range of themes and ideas.
Keihm, who is also an artist, has been making a series of images for the past six years by deconstructing a book of works by artist Richard Serra, removing his works from the pages and reusing the interiors. “I’m thinking about the lack of femme people who gained notoriety in the Minimalist movements of the 1960s and 1970s while also reflecting on the namelessness of installation photographers,” she says. Her body appears in every image, communicating how architecture and collage are spaces for the body to inhabit.
Keihm’s collage-influenced pieces hone in on the documentation itself rather than the work it was meant to record, investigating the way light was used at the time to highlight objects and space. For the past 15 years, she has used a medium-format camera because it allows her to “assert control” over her environment, whereas a more recent merging with collaging techniques has evolved into “a practice of letting that control go,” she says. “It helps me to create a disorientation that a photograph by itself fell short of.”
Through its high-end digital lab, which is open to the public, and an artist residency anchoring a program of social, academic, and professional events, Latitude emphasizes a communal environment where education and artistic production go hand-in-hand. Operated by a small staff and a team of dedicated volunteers, the facility provides access for hundreds of artists and community members throughout the year.
Never odd or even (perhaps the bone I think I am biting is my own tail), 2013-2020
Inkjet print and UV printed matboard in powder-coated aluminum frame, 14.5 x 12.5 in
For B. Ingrid Olson, whose work is currently on view in the Whitney Biennial, Latitude has been a go-to for the past seven years. She was introduced to the program during a residency in 2017, during which she learned to use a drum scanner and digitize film. She still regularly uses the lab to print her photographic pieces. “As a person who never studied photography in school, the staff of Latitude, and Colleen Keihm in particular, have been supportive of my learning new things,” she says.
Completed Movement (between abut and rub between two notes the number between one and two divided into qualities and kinds), 2016-2022
Inkjet print and UV printed matboard in powder-coated aluminum frame, 38 x 18 x 1.25 in
Olson embraces a variety of mediums in her work, which is often image-based and evolves into sculptural forms and enigmatic assemblages. Glimpses of body parts meet liminal spaces as reflections, compartments, and framing devices invite the viewer into fragmented narratives. “Latitude is an invaluable resource for artists who would not otherwise have access to facilities to make their work,” she says. “The only other option is to use service bureau style businesses, which are many, many times more expensive, and for most artists, are cost prohibitive to making work.”
Image Workers (Fast Clipping Path, Dhaka, Bangladesh), 2020
Archival inkjet prints, tape, and push pins
Another Chicago-based artist who turns to Latitude to bring his work to fruition is Robert Chase Heishman, whose practice revolves around a constant search “to better-understand myself, the world, and this thing called ‘life,’” he says. “I initially gravitated to photography because it felt like the most expansive of mediums, and because it resembled the way I saw the world.”
Experimentation is at the heart of Heishman’s work. “There are significant subjects that I process and translate: life and death; increased mediation in our lives; climate catastrophe; outsourced image editing; the act of physically building as a metaphor for one’s life; etc.—but I am not trained in storytelling, journalism, or even documentary photography/filmmaking,” he says, sharing that by not being burdened with those categories, he can instead plumb the process of trial and error or the element of chance that gives rise to good stories.
Hand Over Fist, 2023
Solvent transfers, collage and liquid rubber on primed canvas mounted to panel, linoleum artist’s frame
Artist Lyndon Barrois Jr. taps into the power of story in his assemblage-influenced works, which take cues from cinema, especially the heist film. “Con artists and robbers are presented as heroic cinematic archetypes; elegant crimes by elegant people,” he says. “I've always been interested in trickery and fakery, and have come to explore artmaking as a sleight of hand, in the same way that movie making suspends disbelief.”
Barrois focuses on the narratives and memories that we associate with specific objects, finding that the connections we draw are often the most interesting element. With the heist film genre in particular, he’s fascinated by how we perceive crimes differently depending on how is enacting them, especially in sweeping criminal practices such as “industrial extraction or colonial enterprises, where the perpetrators fancy themselves as virtuous.”
Chrononauts
Acrylic and plaster compound on canvas, collage, space tape
In collage and image-making—and through the creative process more broadly—archives and fragments are the building blocks artists puzzle together to express unique perspectives and “invite the potential of narrative projection into the gaps between objects,” Barrois says.
Latitude strives to be a place where people can gather, ask questions, learn, and share their skills. “We are a place where people can ask questions about materiality and concept by trying new methods of making,” Colleen Keihm says. “Half of the artists we’ve accepted [to the artist residency] return to the lab each year, with some visiting six to eight times annually. A joy of my job is introducing a current resident to a former one. This happens monthly, organically, and can create exciting collaborations.”