Bathers and Other Liquid Pictures (Installation views)
2008
Cyanotype prints on paper and plastic mounted on various materials, negatives on plate glass

Description: The exhibition Bathers and Other Liquid Pictures mixed images of male bathers with representations of events from recent U.S. maritime history. The works were hand-printed on various substrates (including plastic adhered to the gallery wall with petroleum jelly) using the antique cyanotype process. All of the images were printed using digital negatives generated by the artist.

Bathers
2008
Cyanotype prints on paper, clear extruded acrylic, wood, mounting tape, sealers and adhesives
84 x 72

Description: From Bathers and Other Liquid Pictures, a body of work mixing images of male bathers with representations of events from recent U.S. maritime history.

U.S.S. Cole Hole
2008
Cyanotype on plastic adhered to wall by petroleum jelly, tape on wall
14.5 x 13.5

Description: From Bathers and Other Liquid Pictures, a body of work mixing images of male bathers with representations of events from recent U.S. maritime history.

Father, can't you see I'm burning?
2008
Installation with cyanotype prints, Plexiglas, wood, toner, tape, acetate, furniture, computer with digital files
Dimensions variable

Description: From the exhibition press release:

John Neff's presentation of new photographic and digital work will mix images of nude male bathers with pieces based on his ongoing series depicting a nautical history of the United States in the late twentieth century. The bather images, large-format cyanotype prints, will be presented on the specially constructed transparent exterior wall of his exhibition booth. The nautical subject – a monitor-bound digital image based on U.S. military photos of the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole and a collection of cyanotype reproductions of news clippings about that incident – will be shown in the booth's dim interior, a space that will be furnished to resemble a makeshift workspace. The project's title, Father, can't you see I'm burning?, refers to a Freudian dream narrated on the video's soundtrack. That soundtrack brings together found audio from two sources: a strangely poetic internet live show from a military-themed gay porn site and a lecture by philosopher Slavoj Zizek discussing the relationship between external violence and internal traumas in psychoanalysis. This textual juxtaposition describes the spatial and visual inversions performed by the project. Those inversions such as a viewer's experience of the "private" bathers before the "public" naval memorial suggest the degree to which private and public, and personal and political, events and identities are not just interpenetrated but actually constitutive of one another in contemporary American society.

Napkin Picture
2009
Cyanotype prints on cotton fabric, nails, tape on wall
96 x 96

Description: From the 2009 series Basic or Boring Pictures. For more information, see www.westernexhibitions.com/neff/basic_boring/index.html.

Back 1
2008 / 2009
Digital silver print
5 x 7

Description: This photograph is from a series shot using a slow-exposure digital camera built by the artist. The figurative distortions in the pictures are the result of movements made during the camera's exposures: they are not post-production effects. These photographs were first shown with the series Basic or Boring Pictures (www.westernexhibitions.com/neff/basic_boring/info.html).

Nocturnes For Boston (Installation view)
2008
Toned cyanotype print on paper on board, lamp, hardware, transparencies on glass, altered overhead projector
Dimensions variable

Description: From the exhibition press release:

The solo exhibition Nocturnes for Boston, the first Boston presentation of work by Chicago-based John Neff, is comprised of large-format toned cyanotype prints and projected transparencies. The figurative images depict historical and recent Boston events involving transvestism (colonists' wearing of Indian garb during the Boston Tea Party) or masking (a study for a memorial to the 2006 death of British citizen Adrian Exley during a breath control / BDSM session in suburban Boston).

For Nocturnes for Boston, Neff has darkened the Proof gallery space and presents a large selection of his glass transparencies as projections from an altered vintage overhead projector. As gallery visitors pass through the projectors' beam, their shadows mingle with the artist's historical reconstructions.

Neff has darkened and tinted his cyanotype prints of nocturnal Boston scenes with tea toning and multiple exposures. Although more conventionally presented, these works also invite intimate engagement from beholders: each is accompanied by a small chapbook outlining detailing the pictures' historical context and citing the images' sources. Compositionally, all of the works in the show are modeled on18th century British "conversation pictures" and grand portraiture.

Presentation Figure
2005 - 2006
Plaster, cement, patching compounds, steel, lamp, hardware, glass eye
Dimensions variable

Description: From the exhibition Pornographic Pantograph with Allusion to Juan Sanchez Cotan (In Progress, Patent Pending), which chronicled the artist's creation of a device for recreating and rephotographing images observed in gay male digital pornography using live models. For a complete description of the project, see www.westernexhibitions.com/current/neff_2006/index.html.

Wheelchair Figure
2005 - 2006
Plaster, gauze, latex, altered wheelchair armature, brass and steel hardware, wood mold / cement cast bases
Dimensions variable

Description: From the exhibition Pornographic Pantograph with Allusion to Juan Sanchez Cotan (In Progress, Patent Pending), which chronicled the artist's creation of a device for recreating and rephotographing images observed in gay male digital pornography using live models. For a complete description of the project, see www.westernexhibitions.com/current/neff_2006/index.html.

Foreground: Maquette Background: Model Figure Study Proof Prints
2005 - 2006
Maquette: Steel, latex, altered gurney, dolls, hardware Proof Prints: cyanotypes with correction pencil, cork, wood, pins, steel hardware
Dimensions variable

Description: From the exhibition Pornographic Pantograph with Allusion to Juan Sanchez Cotan (In Progress, Patent Pending), which chronicled the artist's creation of a device for recreating and rephotographing images observed in gay male digital pornography using live models. For a complete description of the project, see www.westernexhibitions.com/current/neff_2006/index.html.

Trans Portrait (Mail Version)
2006
Cyanotypes, negative transparencies, acid-free clear and masking tapes, gesso, oil stick, paste wax, packing labels and hardware on hollow-core door p
64 x 83

Description: Trans Portrait (Mail Version) is made on a substrate of two 32" by 80" hollow core flat panel doors hinged together along one edge. When closed, the piece functions as its own shipping crate. Opened for display, the work stands upright independently in the manner of a screen or room divider. On the left interior surface is a collage of cyanotype prints stapled roughly to the door's face. On the interior of the right panel, the negative used in the printing of the cyanotypes is taped over a surface of waxed oil and acrylic. The negative was pieced together from negative transparencies made from digital photographs.

M To F Negative Reversal
2006
Cyanotype on Arches Platine paper
8.5 x 11

Description: This work is from the Trans Genital Blueprints series, a collection of unique cyanotypes (literally blueprints). Many of the prints have additions and corrections in white grease pencil. All were exposed using the same negative, a photographic transparency of Neff's genitals that was cut and re-assembled to depict a schematic vagina.