Paul Turounet
Ambiguities of Intention

Paul Turounet - Ambiguities of Intention

Contemporary artist Paul Turounet, who has spent decades studying the psychology of place, shifts in these recent works to a meditation on what he calls “unintentional intentionality.” Media often compounds meaning for this artist; it has pushed, carried, reinforced potency of his works. Turounet is generally described as a photographer, but more truthfully will employ any method the work requires from site specific and gallery installations to book structures, extra-large or alternative prints, appropriation, or recomposition-based sculptures, to push us into a psychological space most aligned with subject, time, and place. Paul Turounet’s photographs often “proof”actions in space and time. Here, Turounet’s (inkjet on transparency) photographs meditate on the language of editing, a practice with which he too subtly engages via selection and (re)framing. The result is playful and contemplative. As we engage the works personal, familial, or collective narratives may awaken. Our own reactions add to the chain of thought; Turounet asks we remain cognizant of these layers.

Turounet began with images from the Farm Security Administration (FSA) archive in the Library of Congress. “I became interested in the placement of the hole punch in various images that had been made under the direction of Roy Stryker, who directed the Information Division of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) during the Great Depression,” said Turounet.

Stryker would provide shooting scripts to the photographers, including Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Arthur Rothstein, Carl Mydans, Marion Post Wolcott as well as the other photographers about what to shoot and where. The photographers returned the film to Washington D.C. for processing, editing, printing and eventual distribution to publications to promote the efforts of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal initiative.

The images in the Ambiguities of Intention series had been rejected, also commonly referred to as “killed,” by Roy Stryker and/or his staff with a hole punch. With the negative killed, it was no longer of any use for printing. The series considers what appears to be the unintentional intentionality of the hole punch and how the placement of the hole punch creates a dialogue with the the visual content and narrative context of the image.

Paul Turounet - Ambiguities of Intention

Ambiguities of Intention No. 27
Self-portrait
Vachon, John, photographer
United States. Farm Security Administration. | 1938 October
United States--Nebraska

Ambiguities of Intention No. 26
House typical of Steel Subdivision, Hamilton County, Ohio
Mydans, Carl, photographer
United States. Resettlement Administration. | 1935 December
United States--Ohio--Hamilton County

Ambiguities of Intention by Paul Turounet | Price-Structure:
10 x 15 in. pigment on transparency
Edition of 5 | $850 print ($1,200 framed)