Chicago Cluster Project
Rod Slemmons—an artist, curator, and educator whose career has been dedicated to the preservation, study, and activation of photographic history—invited Jan Tichy, artist, curator and professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), to engage with his photography collections as a site for critical inquiry and creative exploration.
The project was shown in two iterations. In 2022 at the Epiphany Center for the Arts, where photographers were invited to activate Slemmon's camera archive and present a solo show. And in 2025 at the former Hedrich & Blessing Photographers (400 N Peoria) where artists who work with archives were invited to activate archives that have accumulated in Tichy's studio over the past decade, including ephemera from Rod Slemmons.
The Chicago Cluster Project name is derived from an obscure moment in American camera manufacturing history, when a considerable number of widely accessible simple plastic cameras were made in Chicago. The Depression Era manufacturing constraints led to wide production and reproduction approaches and innovative design solutions like the dual red window.
For more information visit: chicagocluster.org
Chicago Cluster Project at
Epiphany Center for the Arts
Don't Take Photographs, Think Them
at former Hedrich & Blessing Photographers
(400 N Peoria)
Double Run Eight
Solo exhibition for the Chicago Cluster Project at Epiphany Center for the Arts
September 9 - October 22, 2022
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Double Run Eight was made with a “Bell & Howell Filmo Double Run Eight” series camera from the Rod Slemmons Camera Archive. The original 8mm format, known as Regular 8 or Double 8, runs a 16mm gauge film stock through the camera, exposing one half of the frame on the first pass. It is then flipped and again runs through the camera, this time exposing the other half of the frame. The final processed film is traditionally split down the center and spliced together, resulting in a 8mm print. Double Run Eight keeps the un-spliced double 8 format, choreographing formal collisions of the resulting four frames through forwards, backwards, and radial motion as a 16mm print. The exhibition at the Epiphany Center for the Arts showed the original negative as a 16mm projection loop. The negative degraded over time, accumulating scratches and dust throughout the duration of the show and eventually disintegrated. The film exists now as a 16mm print.
The accompanying photographs were made using a Kodak 16mm Enlarger camera also from the Slemmons Camera Archive. This camera was designed to photograph 16mm frames onto still photographic film. The visual and temporal shift of the moving image to a photographic print serves as a reminder of the fundamental connection between still photography and cinema. The negative-positive inversions are a rudimentary principle of the analogue process, thus the rephotographing sequence can be traced through the “double negative” contact print of a negative image on a black background and the white prints resulting from contact printing of these.
Double Run Eight black and white double-8 film installed as 16mm loop projection
gelatin silver prints
A Japanese Girl
Chicago Cluster Project at former Hedrich & Blessing Photographers, 400 N. Peoria
March 28 - April 27, 2025
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Responding to the written inscription on the back of a cabinet card from the Slemmons collection, A Japanese Girl considers the cultural biases present within archival practices. The work proposes a revision of the visual lexicon of “a Japanese girl” by expanding the original singular archive with portraits of the artist and found photographs. There is indeed an image of a Japanese girl on the front and the double-sided frame seems to offer an opportunity to confirm this. The new archive however, is a collection ofimages withholds the typical identifiers (facial features, clothing, location) that support an archetypal system from which the original descriptor derives.The photographs eschew the frontal gaze, never revealing a face. This simple gesture encourages a reevaluation of the parameters that inform what one might expect a Japanese girl to look like. These latent, preconceived images are met with a different visual narrative: the traditional Japanese updo hairstyles and the “signature bun,” a recognizable feature of the artist. All markers of a Japanese girl.
Double-sided frames with cabinet card from Slemmons collection, portraits of artist (gelatin silver print, Polaroid, Fuji instant film) and found photographs
400 N. Peoria
Chicago Cluster Project at former Hedrich & Blessing Photographers, 400 N. Peoria
March 28 - April 27, 2025
Click to expand for detailed image info
Stemming from conversations around an album of early Japanese picture postcards from the Slemmons collection, Kioto Aoki & Jan Tichy collaborate on a pair of Japanese ink stamps that commemorate this current iteration of the Chicago Cluster Project in the former studio of Hedrick & Blessing Photographers at 400 N. Peoria.
Japan was once one of the largest producers of postcards, popular among both domestic and international customers as photographic memorabilia. The postcards from the Slemmons album range from hand-colored collotypes to real photo postcards and many are stamped with commemorative “Kuroki Imperial Residence” in purple ink. The practice of collecting stamps in Japan is said to have originated from the practice of temples and shrines having individual goshuin seal stamps with calligraphy that visitors receive as proof of pilgrimage after paying respects. The seals have unique designs for each location and season, along with the date and function as a memento of one’s visit. Carved, individualized seals (hanko) are still used in lieu of a handwritten signature for official documents today; and collectible stamps can be found at historical, landmarked or notable locations including shrines, temples, museums and train stations.
The 400 N. Peoria stamps offer an exercise of this production and reproduction, connecting the histories of photographic and printmaking technologies with a stamp culture particular to Japan. Much like how the architectural photographs from Hedrich & Blessing built a historical archive of the city of Chicago, these stamps are a site-specific and temporal archive of a particular moment in time. The artists in the show activate various collections and archives from Tichy’s studio. Visitors are invited to experience these activations and record their encounter as participants in this cultural and creative exchange. In a month’s time, the exhibition will be deinstalled, the building repurposed, the stamp decommissioned. What is left then, is this new archive built through the collective activity of stamping, which will continue to circulate beyond these exhibition walls.
Two commemorative stamps, ink
Click to expand for detailed image info
Double Run Eight was made with a “Bell & Howell Filmo Double Run Eight” series camera from the Rod Slemmons Camera Collection. The original 8mm format, known as Regular 8 or Double 8, runs a 16mm gauge film stock through the camera, exposing one half of the frame on the first pass. It is then flipped and again runs through the camera, this time exposing the other half of the frame. The final processed film is traditionally split down the center and spliced together, resulting in a 8mm print.
Double Run Eight keeps the un-spliced double 8 format, choreographing formal collisions of the resulting four frames through forwards, backwards, and radial motion as a 16mm film. In this way, the film works with the physical mechanisms of the camera and the image plane. This iteration of the film as a two-channel digital projection has one of the projections inverted, inviting the viewer to experience the film from both directions. The installation format also mimics the image plane, with two viewers and two projections becoming four quadrants, or four frames.
The accompanying photographs are contact prints of the negatives made using a Kodak 16mm Enlarger camera, also from the Slemmons Collection. This camera was designed to photograph 16mm frames onto still photographic film. The visual and temporal shift of the moving image to a photographic print serves as a reminder of the fundamental connection between still photography and cinema. The negative-positive inversions are a rudimentary principle of the analogue process, and the rephotographing sequence can be traced through the “double negative” contact print of a negative image on a black background.
Two-channel digital projection of original 16mm print,
gelatin silver prints