HSC&A / Jerry McMillan
Jerry McMillan
Untitled
1972
Photo etching on brass
16 x 16 x 3 inches
Vintage, Unique
Artist Jerry McMillan created his first photo etching (above) in 1972 on the porch of his studio on Western Avenue, upstairs from Ed Ruscha. At that time, he was the only artist known to be working in this media, and his objective was always to expand the possibilities of what photography could be. It was exhibited in 1972 at the Orlando Gallery, Los Angeles, along with work by Darryl Curran and Robert Heinecken.
The photo etching process employs a Kodalith line negative and acid to slowly etch away the metal plate. McMillan created many of these photo-etching sculptures in the 1980s and exhibited them at the legendary Margo Leavin Gallery.
I asked myself, “What’s the difference between photography and art?”
The real difference is that art has non-objective abstraction in its history. Photography doesn’t. Could a photographer do a non-objective abstract work, and I don’t mean a picture of peeling paint on a wall. That just looks like abstraction but it isn’t. I thought, what does photography do? It represents three-dimensional space, on a two-dimensional plane. And that was how I began addressing my work, using the camera as a mechanical, spatial tool.
—Jerry McMillan
Joe Goode, Jerry McMillan (self-portrait) and Ed Ruscha with Ed’s 39 Chevy, gelatin silver print, 1970. Courtesy of Craig Krull Gallery, reproduction photography Larry Lytle.
/ About the Artist
Jerry McMillan is a Los Angeles photographer by way of Oklahoma City. After moving to California, McMillan played a vital role as a documentor of the mid-century Los Angeles art scene, collaborating closely with artists, including fellow Oklahomans Ed Ruscha and Joe Goode. Ruscha, Judy Chicago, and Barbara T. Smith are among the artists whose public images came to be widely recognized, thanks to the often whimsically staged role-playing McMillian captured. While McMillan is known primarily as a photographer and catalog designer, he also developed his own artistic expression using photography as an experimental medium. He is one of the pioneers of photo-sculpture, and has been a dedicated creator of photographic three-dimensional objects throughout his career.
McMillan's seminal photo-sculptures were exhibited as early as 1966 in his first major solo exhibition at the Pasadena Art Museum. They were also featured in the landmark 1970 exhibition Photography into Sculpture, curated by Peter C. Bunnell at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. McMillan’s photo archives are now housed at the Getty Research Institute.
