Of Thieved Things

Printmaker Anna Reser on her series, We Are All Made of Stars

These pieces, dealing with images related to human space exploration, are from my most recent body of work, We Are All Made of Stars. With this work, as well as with my current works exploring symbols of the occult, I have been thinking about the creative nature of recording history. In some sense, the very act of recording an object or event changes it—creates an object or image that is separate from the original event. We see this change manifested in works that appropriate images, but one could consider the historical record an appropriation in and of itself, of a direct experience.

Printmaking lends itself to this type of investigation—the maker is separated from the image by the act of making a matrix. That is, the artist doesn’t make the image, the matrix does. Working with images taken from historical record exacerbates this distance. The images in my last body are from NASA’s archives, from books and transcripts, video, and other media surrounding the events of American space travel. History has lifted the images from the events themselves, which are colored by the perspective and viewpoint of the original photographer, cameraman, or author. I then appropriate these images and make a matrix from them, which produces prints.

In some cases, I cut the prints apart and recombine them into different images. By doing this, not only do I admit my own incalculable distance from the original events, but also exaggerate this distance through my process. This distance, and the changes that occur in an image because of it, are at the very heart of our understanding of our world.

Anna Reser is a printmaker and professional coffee drinker, living in Albuquerque and trying to eventually graduate.