MArks (Cappadocia)

Paul Taylor

These images depict soot charred interior cave walls of Byzantine Monasteries hand-hewn from rock by monks beginning around 400 AD in Cappadocia, Turkey. I had spent a month in Cappadocia photographing the landscape using the wet plate collodion process the previous year. On the last days of this trip I became awestruck by the poignant beauty and history incised in these walls. The finished walls reflect the individual artistry of the inscriber, some are deeply gouged without pattern, some follow the symmetry of the cave and others are the abstractions of the carver. I made plans to return and photograph the following year. It was important to me to render this work as closely as possible to my original experience of them. To prepare I built a black plaster wall and experimented with cameras, lighting and technique and settled on portable strobes and a large format camera. I felt the dimensionality of photogravure prints made with carbon black ink was an ideal way to print these photographs.

Paul Taylor, New Hampshire, 2022

Specifications / Credits

Title: Marks (Cappadocia)
Artist: Paul Taylor
Year: 2005 (photographed), 2006 (plates)
Process: Hand-pulled photogravure
Photogravures: Paul Taylor
Print Size: 17 x 23 3/4 in
Image Size: 7 5/8 x 9 3/4 in
Edition: 3/12
Collection: Paul Taylor

Paul Taylor (b. 1958, USA) is a photographer, printmaker, and educator. He began working with photogravure in 1979 and apprenticed with John Craig at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut. He has spent much of the last thirty years studying, researching, and making art with various photographic printmaking techniques, cementing his position as one of the most important gravure printers in the United States today. He founded and runs Renaissance Press which has long worked with significant photographers, publishing and producing work for Sally Mann and Aaron Siskind, as well as many of the photographers represented in this show, such as Milagros de la Torre and Roy DeCarava. For more information, visit: https://www.renaissancepress.com