Chair, Society for Photographic Education Conference, Miami, FL 2007

It’s been a busy couple of days for me and chairs, so I thought I’d end the week with one more. (Thanks Abbey, Jason Kottke, Kris at Visual Studies Workshop and the many others who helped spread the word about “Every Chair” on Flickr)

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The final night of the Society for Photographic Education Conference is quite the spectacle. The two conferences I’ve attended have culminated with a Saturday night dance party, each an unusual intersection of energetic students, up-and-coming and well-known image makers, and veteran professors.

Because it’s a party, it’s the sort of place where the usual barriers of academe are replaced with a festive collegiality. Much like being in 3rd grade and seeing your teacher at the grocery store, you realize “Oh, they’re human beings, too!” I recall standing next to a widely published and collected contemporary photographer who stared at the scene with a slack-jawed awe. “What … the hell?” was all he could muster; as if he’d never seen the people who’d shaped his career and worldview shimmying to a cover band’s loose rendition of “Louie Louie.”

But the undeniable highlight of these parties are the free Polaroids. Revelers are invited to pose as many times as they like and box after box of large format Polaroid film is exposed. Individual portraits and group shots abound with people getting a bit more creative as the night progresses. It was towards the end of the party that I noticed this lone chair sitting before the backdrop having previously been piled on by some boisterous young students as they captured a conference memory.

At the time I was nearing the completion of photographing every chair at the Visual Studies Workshop and I immediately recognized the opportunity for an image. The chair’s persona was obvious to me. Round, but featuring tightly striped upholstery, it looked like an overweight man in a fitted suit, perhaps a successful banker from early 20th century.

But something compelled me – I wanted more than a picture of that chair. I wanted to clarify the subject, that this chair was an image of an idea. Some leaping attempt at “Ceci n’est pas une chair.” Some way to sum up my feelings on objects – and photographs of objects – as vessels of time, experience, individual memory and wider history. So with the limited resources at my disposal, I did what I could.