©David Ondrik, Psychic Warfare, 2021, unique gelatin silver prints, photogram, chemigram, contact print, 28” x 30”

Making work that sums up the last 18 months is a complex task. So many layers of loss, grief, horror, fear, and disgust permeate our sensibilities lately, combined with a resetting of how we see ourselves, our country and the world. David Ondrik‘s project, Other Emphatic Caprices, is in some ways, the perfect expelling of emotion as he creates ghostly explosions, filled with destruction and memory, that speak to this moment in time.

David Ondrik’s artwork is held by the New Mexico Museum of Art, the University of New Mexico Art Museum, and multiple New Mexico public art collections. Publications include Photography: A 21st Century Practice by Marc Chen and Chelsea Shannon, Undermining by Lucy Lippard, and Photography: New Mexico by Thomas F. Barrow and Kristin Barendsen. He has a BFA in Studio Art from the University of New Mexico and an MFA in Studio Art from Indiana University, where he is a Lecturer in Photography.  Follow David on Instagram: @davidondrik

©David Ondrik, For Fighting Over, 2021, unique gelatin silver prints, photogram, chemigram, contact print, 28” x 30”, 28” x 30”

Other Emphatic Caprices

Other Emphatic Caprices wrestles with the disasters of racism, environmental destruction, concentration of wealth, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The title comes from Francisco Goya’s handwritten title for the prints now known as The Disasters of War: “Fatales consequencias de la sangrienta guerra en España con Buonaparte, Y otros caprichos enfáticos.”

The artwork is assembled from unique, individually processed pieces of gelatin silver paper. Each piece is created with appropriated news and medical images. The exposure comes by moving a small cabinet scraping plane across the paper to “draw” with light before each print is chemically mis-processed to force color out of the normally B&W silver paper. This scraping plane is intended to smooth exceptionally difficult, burled wood – its use is a metaphor for exposing and treating complex, deeply rooted tumult.

©David Ondrik, IntendedConsequences, 2021, unique gelatin silver prints, photogram, chemigram, contact print, 28” x 30”

©David Ondrik, Convinced the Liberals it’s Okay, 2021, unique gelatin silver prints, photogram, chemigram, contact print, 28” x 30”

©David Ondrik, Not My Department, 2021, unique gelatin silver prints, photogram, chemigram, contact print, 28” x 30”

©David Ondrik, Mistakes Built to Last, 2021, unique gelatin silver prints, photogram, chemigram, contact print, 28” x 30”

©David Ondrik, Shit from Shinola, 2021, unique gelatin silver prints, photogram, chemigram, contact print, 28” x 30”

©David Ondrik, On the Nature of Fire, 2021, unique gelatin silver prints, photogram, chemigram, contact print, 28” x 30”

©David Ondrik, Spring Cleaning, 2021, unique gelatin silver prints, photogram, chemigram, contact print, 28” x 30

©David Ondrik, Those that Work Forces, 2021, unique gelatin silver prints, graphite, gouache, acrylic varnish, 24” x 34”

©David Ondrik, Bullets, unique gelatin silver prints, photogram, chemigram, contact print, 16” x 18”

©David Ondrik, Capsaicin, unique gelatin silver prints, photogram, chemigram, contact print, 16” x 18”

©David Ondrik, Charlottesville, unique gelatin silver prints, photogram, chemigram, contact print, 16” x 18”

©David Ondrik, Louisville, unique gelatin silver prints, photogram, chemigram, contact print, 16” x 18”

©David Ondrik, Wildfires, unique gelatin silver prints, photogram, chemigram, contact print, 16” x 18”

Elizabeth M. Claffey is an Assistant Professor of Photography at Indiana University in Bloomington, a 2019-20 Research Fellow at The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction and a 2012 William J. Fulbright Fellow. She has an MFA in Studio Art from Texas Woman’s University, where she also earned a Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies. Before joining the faculty at IU, she participated in The Eddie Adams Workshop and freelanced for various organizations and publications including The Dallas Morning News, NBC Universal Studios, and the United Nations Women’s Fund. In 2017 her work was selected for a Center Santa Fe Director’s Choice Award by Kim Sajet of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. In 2021, she was awarded an Outstanding Junior Faculty Award and an IU Presidential Award for Research and Creative Activity. Elizabeth’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and focuses on identity, kinship, isolation, issues of the body, family history, and cultural/institutional practices. Follow Elizabeth on instagram: @photo_lizzie