The long, narrow, glass-walled studio of Janice Mehlman is perched half way up the steep garden of her home, on a hillside near Pietrasanta.
Many of her abstract photographs are hung on crisp white walls, and she welcomes us inside to look at some of her work from the last 30 years. She explains how she started as a photographer, focusing on black-and-white images of architecture. After creating an image that captured a chance moment of light on a discarded photographic proof in her waste bin, she started to incorporate objects into her compositions.
She shows us her workbench, where she finds inspiration. When light from the window shines in, it illuminates a cornucopia of materials in every colour and texture. We see swimwear, hats, netting and fluorescent wrapping – all glittering in the morning sun.
Janice explains how her work has evolved over the years, particularly in relation to her exploration of her sensuality and sexuality as a woman. She talks about using her own intimate garments and other objects to create compositions that reflect her inner soul.
She also recounts how her work has responded to different experiences, such as the Covid-19 pandemic and shows us a few pieces from that series.
We hear how she was inspired by a disastrous trip to Chicago to create one of her most acclaimed series of work, choosing to find the positive even in adversity.
The long, narrow, glass-walled studio of Janice Mehlman is perched half way up the steep garden of her home, on a hillside near Pietrasanta.
Many of her abstract photographs are hung on crisp white walls, and she welcomes us inside to look at some of her work from the last 30 years. She explains how she started as a photographer, focusing on black-and-white images of architecture. After creating an image that captured a chance moment of light on a discarded photographic proof in her waste bin, she started to incorporate objects into her compositions.
She shows us her workbench, where she finds inspiration. When light from the window shines in, it illuminates a cornucopia of materials in every colour and texture. We see swimwear, hats, netting and fluorescent wrapping – all glittering in the morning sun.
Janice explains how her work has evolved over the years, particularly in relation to her exploration of her sensuality and sexuality as a woman. She talks about using her own intimate garments and other objects to create compositions that reflect her inner soul.
She also recounts how her work has responded to different experiences, such as the Covid-19 pandemic and shows us a few pieces from that series.
We hear how she was inspired by a disastrous trip to Chicago to create one of her most acclaimed series of work, choosing to find the positive even in adversity.
A podcast where artists tell their stories through the materials they choose.
Janice Mehlman:
I started taking all my intimate garments. So I was using my bras and my panties and my scarves, and then started using some lingerie. And and I started hanging them and moving them and getting in close to them and creating these compositions that really felt a lot like my guts, my innards, my inner soul. And that was the whole series I started, which changed my whole way of looking at my work.
Sarah Monk:
Hi. This is Sarah with another episode of Materially Speaking, where artists and artisans tell their stories through the materials they choose. Today, Mike Axinn and I take a tiny road up the hillside on the Carrara side of Pietrasanta to find Janice Mehlman. Janice is a New York photographer who divides her time between Pietrasanta and Brooklyn and shares her life with her husband, the sculptor Ron Mehlman. Her long, narrow glass walled studio is perched halfway up the steep garden of her home.
Sarah Monk:
Inside, many of her abstract photographs hang on the walls or are leaning in frames against the table leg. There is printing equipment, photographic paper, and a pile of proofs stacked on the table. A workbench heaves with a cornucopia of materials in every color and texture. We see swimwear, hats, netting, and fluorescent wrapping, all glittering in the morning sun. We ask Janice to introduce herself.
Janice Mehlman:
I'm Janice Mehlman, and I'm a photographer. And I'm also a professor of art in City University in New York. And I've been a photographer for many years. I'm mostly an artist photographer. So I make photographs that derive from reality, but I create a kind of abstraction in my work, always looking at light and shadow and geometry and illusion.
Sarah Monk:
Can you tell us where we're sitting now?
Janice Mehlman:
Well, you're currently in my beautiful studio in Pietrasanta, sort of tucked into the mountain. And I have all of my work around me, so there's light pouring in the window. And I really do work with light, And my photographs emanate light. So you can look around and see a sample of my career as a photographer, and there's almost a little history here. So I have photographs from thirty years ago that are in black and white, and silver prints, and all the way to things that I did six months ago that are large pigment prints, printed by me, 30 by 40 inches.
Sarah Monk:
And I see behind you some intriguing piles of stuff. Can you tell us about your materials?
Janice Mehlman:
So when I began as a photographer, I photographed mostly in black and white, existing architecture, and I found light and shadow and geometry and spaces beyond had a kind of a mystery in the existing architecture. At a certain point, I started to work with existing objects, and it began using ripped paper and elements of paper with light coming through them, and ultimately it moved to other objects. And so behind me is a whole slew of objects that I've been finding more recently.
Sarah Monk:
Let's go over and have a look at that.
Janice Mehlman:
Let's go look at the objects. So my objects that I put into my photographs, so they're kind of like still lives. I use existing things. And so what I'm looking at right here are some beaded purses and some Christmas glass, crystal balls that you might hang on a Christmas tree. And I have some glassware with interesting shapes in them.
Janice Mehlman:
And I have a very iridescent purse that is in plastic where you can see through it and it creates shadows. So I have a whole slew of objects in front of me. And when I wanna make a photograph, the light pours into my window. I always use natural light, and I kind of manipulate by moving the objects around. And then it's my point of view that I get into the objects where I create a kind of beautiful, luminous abstraction.
Mike Axinn:
This window, is that crucial for you? I mean, you said that you work with natural light, so it seems as if this window is almost part of your work process.
Janice Mehlman:
At a certain time of day in this studio, the light pours through this window, and I work with a desk that I have my objects, and I will arrange them. But it doesn't have to be this window. I go up stairs on the patio upstairs and bring objects with me. I have light pouring in my New York window when I'm in Brooklyn. When I'm in Italy and I'm in Pietrasanta and I wanna photograph from indoors, the light pours in between four and 6 PM, and I come up and I look at what the light is doing, and I move things around. And maybe I'll pull something in and pull something out, try to find new things to put into my compositions, and that's how the window relates to my work.
Mike Axinn:
You kinda moved in on some objects, and it's like almost like you were seeing a photograph. What is it that makes you decide that, okay. This is gonna be an interesting work or photograph?
Janice Mehlman:
I'm looking at spatial relationships, and I'm looking at what the light and shadow is doing. So sometimes it won't even be something that I'm thinking about because I'm not a painter and I'm not a sculptor. I can't look at a blank canvas and put something on it. What I do is I look around and find things, and then I make my art. So if suddenly the light is hitting some of these objects in a certain way, I get excited.
Janice Mehlman:
I come in and I start creating compositions. I may move an object a little bit here and there and change the position to get that kind of depth and look beyond. My photographs are kind of magical. So the light has to create magic. And when there's magic, I know it. And then I go and I make the photo.
Mike Axinn:
So if you move three inches to the left, the magic wouldn't be there.
Janice Mehlman:
A 100%. Exactly. It's exactly the point at which I'm finding that magical moment. Photography is really for me about capturing the moment. And historically, when photographers like, Cartier Bresson, it was all about the decisive moment, but they were talking about people and what people were doing in the decisive moment.
Janice Mehlman:
For me, it's also a decisive moment, but it's about what the light is doing. So mine, you talk about materiality. It's about what the light does to the texture, what the light does to the ambiance. My whole life now, there's a lot of mystical kind of quality to my thinking. And I'm thinking about, like, other worldliness and what happens after this life and things like that.
Sarah Monk:
That's really interesting. So how has your work changed over the past, say, ten years then?
Janice Mehlman:
I'll explain my steps from reality to abstraction. I started looking at architecture, and then I would go out and find things. So I'm out in Pietrasanta photographing a construction site. And the light is coming in and I make this beautiful photograph of light pouring through a construction site. I'm now in my studio and I'm printing that photograph, making a little proof.
Janice Mehlman:
And I don't like quality of the proof. I throw it in my trash bin. And then I turn around and I look at the trash bin and the light is hitting the trash bin where the shadows of this mesh trash bin is on this folded photograph. And I'm like, oh my god, I gotta get my camera. And so it was like three steps from reality to create abstraction. And that was probably the first time I started working with objects.
Janice Mehlman:
I had always been a photographer and never thought of myself as a woman photographer. But when I turned a certain age, I started thinking about myself. What would I do as a woman photographer? I wanna look inwards.
Janice Mehlman:
I wanna think about my sensuality, my sexuality as a woman of a certain age. I'm not gonna tell you that age. But at any rate, I started taking all my intimate garments. So I was using my bras and my panties and my scarves and then started using some lingerie.
Janice Mehlman:
And I started hanging them and moving them and getting in close to them and creating these compositions that really felt a lot like my guts, my innards, my inner soul, and somewhat sensual. And my mother recently passed away. And here we're looking at a photograph that I did using one of my bras with some of the glassware that I had gotten from my mother's estate and putting it together. And they're very sensual and very seductive images. And that was the whole series I started, which was ten years ago, changed my whole way of looking at my work.
Janice Mehlman:
I started, like, doing a series like, whatever I buy that's really gonna be great in my work has to fit me. So I found these amazing shoes. They're like silver shoes.
Sarah Monk:
I see them. Yeah.
Janice Mehlman:
Silver shoes.
Sarah Monk:
They're kind of Cinderella shoes.
Janice Mehlman:
Cinderella shoes that they had to be my size. And if they were my size, I'd wear them once, and then they go into my work.
Mike Axinn:
It's like a self portraiture, with the idea that these items of clothing, they have to fit you.
Janice Mehlman:
Yes. That's super interesting. Interesting. The work has always reflected whatever is going on in my mind or whatever is going on around me. So during COVID, I'm, like, locked up. What am I gonna do? How do I make work that's something to do with COVID? You know? And so I started working with these rich glassware, and I bought corona beer bottles because corona virus. And I put them into these ridged glasses.
Janice Mehlman:
And I started making these photographs, and they kind of look like lungs filling up with fluid. I mean, they're very beautiful.
Sarah Monk:
Is this one here?
Janice Mehlman:
This is one right here. And, you can see that here it says corona, corona, corona, corona in the right hand glassware, but it also looks like a lung full of fluid. I did this beautiful photograph, and I had it in an exhibition. And someone came over to me and said, do you see a portrait down here with a mask? It's almost like a silhouette with an eye and a nose and a mask and a little beanie cap.
Janice Mehlman:
And it was like, no. I never saw that when I made the photograph, but how weird is that that, like, this woman got into my photograph in a mask during COVID. I mean, it was just these crazy things, little surprises that happen. So I did a whole series of COVID, and I did one piece called follow the yellow brick road, and it was belts and various ribbons. And it felt like I was Dorothy, and I just wanted to get home.
Sarah Monk:
It's beautiful. Yes.
Janice Mehlman:
Self portrait, it's always about what I'm feeling and what I'm thinking and the time I'm living in and my reaction to whatever it is, but I hope to make something that other people have a similar kind of reaction to because it's a dialogue. It's a conversation. My work should be a conversation, lead to a conversation.
Sarah Monk:
Can you tell us more about this series that you did during COVID? So we have the corona one and
Janice Mehlman:
That one that you're looking at there also has the corona beer bottles in it.
Sarah Monk:
Oh, yes. I can see the logo.
Janice Mehlman:
Like an explosion. And everything is just getting out of control and it's just going everywhere. And so my work has always been controlling that explosion. So there's a geometry, there's like keeping everything within that rectangle. I'm very, very involved with a kind of balance.
Janice Mehlman:
And so if you look at that photograph, you see that there's this explosion, but it's contained. So I think it's my way of holding it all together. I mean, if I'm in a sad state, something's going on, I always go to work because I can get out of it by working. And then hopefully, I create something from that chaos.
Sarah Monk:
About work in response to adversity, you told me about a trip you took, which ended up in Chicago.
Janice Mehlman:
I'm a person that turns every disadvantage into an advantage. That's like my policy in life. And I've had a lot thrown at me. So this was just a small example. I had to go to a wedding in Chicago from Pisa, from Pietrasanta.
Janice Mehlman:
And so at 07:00 in the morning, we left to the airport, and we got there at 07:30, and my flight didn't exist. There was just no sign of the flight that I booked. There were 15 of us standing in the airport and nobody to help us and nothing. So, of course, I got on my computer because I was determined to get to Chicago within that day, had a wedding the next day. So I got on my computer. I found a flight that might get me to Chicago through Florence to Paris. So we drove to Florence. I called Delta. They booked me on it. I'm not gonna go through all the details, but we missed the flight.
Janice Mehlman:
They then took me to Bologna. I spent thirty six hours getting from Pisa to Chicago. I was in six airports during COVID, by the way. So you could, and with a sprained ankle. So they were moving me around with a wheelchair.
Janice Mehlman:
It was the trip from hell. Could not have possibly been any worse. I got to Chicago at 11:30 in the morning the following day. This is thirty six hours after I left my house in Pietrasanta. Exhausted, worn out, angry, miserable, dirty, unhappy, and with a sprained ankle.
Janice Mehlman:
So this lovely young lady comes and gets me at the airplane to wheel me to the taxi and to get my luggage. And we come out into the terminal of United in Chicago, and it is the most beautiful space I've ever been in, ever. And, looking at these colors, I'm looking at this architecture, I'm looking at this space, and I think, I have to get my camera. I have to get out my camera. How do I do this?
Janice Mehlman:
I'm in a wheelchair. This girl has her job to take me to a taxi. So listen. If I give you a little money, would you just give me an hour of your time to wheel me around so I can make some photographs? Because you're a photographer.
Janice Mehlman:
I'm a photographer too. I couldn't have found the better girl. She was fabulous. Well, I ended up spending two hours, and I made nine amazing photographs in those two hours. I'm having all kinds of accolades from this series. They are so beautiful. It's like the best work I've done this year. And that was from that horrible thirty six hours.
Sarah Monk:
And what's the series called, Janice?
Janice Mehlman:
It's called Come Fly With Me.
Sarah Monk:
I think I'm coming with you.
Janice Mehlman:
There you go. And, also, every one of the images has a title that would have been an advertisement for one of these airlines. They all have different slogans for Delta or TWA or, you know, over the years.
Sarah Monk:
Can you tell us a little about how you interact with your audience?
Janice Mehlman:
The funny thing about my work all the years is it attracts all kinds of different people. I had an experience in Bogota. My most important show that I ever had was at the Museum of Modern Art in Bogota, Colombia. And it was a modern art museum in a city of 8,000,000 people. I mean, it was super exciting, and I had a whole floor.
Janice Mehlman:
And they made an opening. And I only knew 10 people in all of Bogota. My opening was packed with young people. And I was curious as to why it was that these young people were coming over to me and telling me how they just love my work and how it moved them. And and so I was asking somebody young, because I do teach and I have students, what do you think it is about my work that attracts all these young people?
Janice Mehlman:
And they said, you know what? You embrace new technology. And young people are very attracted to new technology. It was very exciting for me when we went from black and white silver prints to digital photography.
Mike Axinn:
It's interesting because you're a photographer. So how does Photoshop fit into that? Obviously, it's Photoshop. But how do you use Photoshop?
Janice Mehlman:
Okay. I really try to be true to my picture. I don't like things that are highly manipulated. To me, what I love about photography is you're photographing something that exists in reality. I don't really wanna change that.
Janice Mehlman:
How I use Photoshop is the way I use the darkroom. I bring out and enhance the blacks. I work with the color. I just try to make the best of the photo that I can make. You know, I teach photography.
Janice Mehlman:
And what I try to tell my students is, yeah, you can make a great picture. But presentation is 40%. So 60% is getting that moment, making the picture. But then how you present the picture, which has to do with giving it the right contrast, giving it the right pizzazz, giving it the right, you know, boom. So it bounces off the wall and calls people in to say, hey, Come look at me.
Mike Axinn:
I've never actually asked you this personally either, but but where are you from exactly?
Janice Mehlman:
I'm from Brooklyn, New York from a little place called Canarsie, and it was far away from Manhattan. And the goal in life was to get to Manhattan. So we just wanted to get out of Canarsie.
Mike Axinn:
Like Saturday night fever.
Janice Mehlman:
It was about getting out of Canarsie. I don't wanna disparage anything or anyone. I had the most wonderful family, but I was raised in a room that had a burst of color anywhere you looked. I had a red shag carpet and flowers on the ceiling, on the walls. And so when I started photographing, my work was completely minimal in black and white.
Janice Mehlman:
It was like, get rid of the color. I had to minimalize everything. My early work was so simple and geometric. And as time went on, I start bringing color back into my life and can incorporate flowers and color and all of this stuff, but it was a passage.
Mike Axinn:
Well, like they say, there's no place like home.
Janice Mehlman:
There's no place like home. Another thing that you had asked well, you didn't ask, but how did I start making photographs? So I started college as a psych and computer major. And then after, like, three semesters, I started to study art because I always love making things, and I love to draw. So I'm drawing on the subway faces, very attracted to people and faces.
Janice Mehlman:
And then I see somebody that has these photographs that they made and I think, I should take a photography class. So I start photographing because I wanna photograph faces. And so now I'm capturing people and I'm really great at it. I mean, the minute I put a camera in my hands, my teachers knew that I got it. And my teacher said, you have to be a photographer.
Janice Mehlman:
So I'm putting you in the graduate program. And he literally walked me to an office where the next semester I was getting my MFA in photography. And I was really a kid, and I was, like, lost. All these professionals were coming back for their master's degrees. And here, I didn't even have a dark room.
Janice Mehlman:
So I learned everything about the history of photography in three minutes. I built a darkroom. And in that, somehow or another, I started moving beyond people. And then I started looking at architecture and then light.
Mike Axinn:
Where were you at school?
Janice Mehlman:
Brooklyn College. Great education.
Sarah Monk:
Have you gotten the advice for your younger self?
Janice Mehlman:
Actually, I think I do. I think I would tell myself take every opportunity. Always say yes. Early on, I had an exhibition in Paris, and they said that this reviewer for this important photo magazine wanted to come see the work. And I said, oh, have him come tomorrow because we're just setting everything up.
Janice Mehlman:
And, of course, he never came. So the thing was to say, absolutely have him come now. I'll pull the work out unframed. Don't miss an opportunity. Never miss an opportunity.
Janice Mehlman:
That was a mistake. Do it now.
Sarah Monk:
So thanks to Janice Mehlman. You can see her work on her website, janicemehlman.org, or on Instagram @janicemehlman As always, you can find photographs of the work discussed today on our website, materiallyspeaking.com, and on Instagram @ materiallyspeakingpodcast. Thanks for listening. And if you're enjoying materially speaking, please subscribe to our newsletter on our website so we can let you know when the next episode goes live.