Lately I’ve been thinking about how great it would have been to meet Robert Heinecken (1931–2006). Heinecken pushed the boundaries of the medium of photography. I like his idea of “analytical facture,” which refers to choosing a medium or artistic process based on how well it’s suited to working through a particular concept.
Process informs content as much as—and sometimes more than—subject matter.

I am most excited about existing formats being used in new ways. In photography, for instance, since digital processes have threatened to make analog photography “obsolete,” there has been a resurgence of artists using not only 20th- but also 19th-century photographic processes, often in unusual and exciting ways. I am interested in exploring how innovations in emerging technologies also lead to innovations in existing technologies and how both reflect contemporary life.

It would be neat to teach an interdisciplinary course on the materiality of medium. We would read theory and criticism, like Clement Greenberg’s argument for medium specificity, alongside texts from chemistry, geology, and environmental studies that explain the materials that comprise artistic mediums, and their impact on human life and the environment. It’s important that artworks are objects that exist in the world and are part of economies of material and labor.