Art Shit: If Lucas Blalock Can Make Crappy PhotoShop Compositions to Reveal His 'Labor,' So Can I. But Who Cares?

By Christine Sloan Stoddard

"Masked Beneath the Stars" by Christine Sloan Stoddard

You know how some teachers plant words in your head? And you remember exactly what they said weeks, months, and even years later? Many elderly folks can recall exact lessons and phrases from different teachers throughout their formal education. Just ask one…in a socially distanced approved way, of course. One of my photography professors seemed orgasmically obsessed with the work of photographer Lucas Blalock. He couldn’t shut up about him. So, as a bright-eyed MFA student, I made plans to attend Blalock’s March 2018 artist talk at the School of Visual Arts as soon as I heard about it. 

My professor had shown us dozens of Blalock’s photographs and described them as pieces that betrayed their labor processes. Blalock is strongly influenced by Bertolt Brecht, the German theatre dude who believed theatre must reveal its labor. Typical Socialist stuff, much of which I can get behind, at least in theory (practice is another matter). Unfortunately, I did not learn much more about Blalock’s work after attending his artist talk. His content only reinforced the fact that white male artists can produce mediocre, or at least one-note, work and get lauded for it. Like I’ve written before, only a white guy could get away with being Andy Warhol.

​So what does it mean that Blalock’s photographs reveal their labor? Basically, he shows his brushstrokes. Since he largely works in Photoshop, that means he shows his use of Photoshop quite plainly. You see choppy pieces crudely cut by the lasso tool. You see digital erasure marks, strange distortions, and various layers in each individual composition. You even see horribly cut and pasted images from other photos, sometimes Clipart, I imagine. It’s all so sloppy. Blalock is not trying to hide his reliance on Photoshop, his little worker bee. Please, please don’t forget the little worker bee.

I don’t want to forget the little worker bee! Cue the COVID-19 pandemic two years after I attend Blalock’s talk. Anyone with a sense of compassion can’t forget the little worker bee. Seriously, how many of us are the worker bee? And BIPOC the most worker bee of worker bees? What I wish I could forget because it simply weren’t so is this: the glorification of Blalock’s recognition of labor. His performance of labor. How nice for him, the white, male tenured college professor at Sarah Lawrence, a private institution, to get to perform labor. 

Instead of…hmm…really doing it. 

The labor. 

The actual labor of quality photography and photo editing. Lighting or finding the light. Adoring an image, pixel by pixel. Using Photoshop…properly.

O let us debate the meaning of technical mastery, shall we? Nope, not now. Most definitions are only going to revere masculine, Westernized, elitist ideals of photography, anyway. Blalock would be most welcome at that club, at least on sight. He’s white and able-bodied. But you already knew or assumed that. His labor and concept of labor would be very different if he were a woman or Black or had any number of disabilities. Do you think Blalock is personally worried about adjunct layoffs at colleges and universities across the country? Or, even just a few miles south of Westchester County, at CUNY, New York City’s public college system? Sorry to speculate, but, uh, no. His job is secure. He had a much better shot of becoming a professor in the first place, just by virtue of his gender, race, and pedigree. As the Chronicle of Higher Education reported, this is the era of ‘lady adjuncts.’ Men get tenure; women do not.

I don’t have anything against Blalock as a human being. I do have something against the idea of him and photographers like him. He apparently studied photography at Bard and has at least aspects of a technical photography education. Good for him. Why is it that white guys with private school educations are the first to point out labor issues and the last to acknowledge their privilege? It’s the charade of deflection. Sure, Dorothea Lange’s photography deals with labor, too, but her work is documentary; it’s not about the labor of The Photographer and His Photographic Tools. It’s about literal, undeniable labor during the Great Depression. 

Maybe because I’m a woman and women perform so much free labor all the time, I don’t see the point of performative labor. Most women I know would send a bill for emotional labor if they could. How many male egos have we stroked in our lifetimes? That’s not to mention housework, child birth, child-rearing, and other traditionally “feminine” forms of labor that still go uncompensated or under-compensated.) I know I’m supposed to laugh at Blalock’s work and sometimes I do. A watermelon with fingernails instead of seeds is goofy before it becomes uncanny, or at least it might wind in that direction if the Photoshop were more convincing. But I also don’t want to laugh at Blalock’s work. I want to cry for all of us women and non-binary folks who just try to live in this world and can’t catch a break. Not the same kind of breaks guys like Blalock do. 

I can do shitty Photoshop, too. But nobody cares when someone who looks like me does it. Not “care” with a capital “C.” Only when someone who looks like Blalock does it.