Local Artist Spotlight: Beau Comeaux

by Laura Seewoester

Here at Pegasus News HQ we spoke with Beau Comeaux in anticipation of his upcoming photography show at Marty Walker Gallery. Comeaux's upcoming show features large, spooky looking images of every day suburban houses and the like. We got the scoop from him on his influences, his process, and his mooning habits.

Pegasus News: When did you start getting interested in photography?

Beau Comeaux: I took my first photo class in middle school back in Louisiana, I think it was 7th grade, we had a little darkroom and stuff. I guess the serious pursuit of photography was when I was in college probably around '97 or so.

PN: When you were at LSU did you intend on pursuing photography or did you do art school first?

BC: I actually was a Comm Design major for a while for most of my long and illustrious undergrad career because I wanted to be creative and be an artist but in my mind the only way I could get paid to do that was to design things for people and so I went at that pretty hard for a while. Then a year away from graduating I switch majors to photo. I was minoring in photo because intro to photo was one of the prerequisite's and thought “Well this is pretty cool I'll minor in that, it will help me with my career.” I found that I would stay in the darkroom and would skip classes to keep working on that so I thought I would just major in photography.

PN: Are there any photographers or other artists who have particularly influenced you and your work?

BC:Sure, especially for the body of work in this particular show, Gregory Crewdson. I would say David Levinthal, I really love the art of Cornelia Parker, although I wouldn't call it a particular influence but there's plenty of people I'm always on the lookout for other art and what's going on and getting ideas from other people and that kind of stuff.

PN:Tell me a little bit about your current series.

BC: What I do is go lurking about at night with my camera and the tripod, and being an only child and growing up exploring and playing in the woods I think I still have a lot of that “what's around the corner?” “what's over the hill?” kind of mentality and so I go off searching for places that show evidence of human interaction but without people per se. There is a great quote from a fellow night photographer Michael Kenna, who I also admire, talked about night lighting as being stage lighting with the actors yet to come on. So I take those scenes that I capture with my digital camera and I bring them home and reinvent, remold, reimagine them with digital tools. I change the focus, the lighting the color, especially the colors, taking things out of them putting things in. And so I have got one foot in the real and one foot in the imaginary and blend those together in a hopefully seamless way where it's hard to tell what's real and what's not.

PN: The houses in particular look fake, but they are real right?

BC: Yeah it comes from this ingrained cultural visual language. Whenever you see something that's partially in focus and partially not what happens is the camera has to be really close to that object and for it to be that close to houses they would have to be little tiny houses so I kind of use that. With the houses series it was more about miniatures and that kind of thing but the focus shift has gone a little more nebulous to where it's not so much a lens based phenomenon. So they don't quite have the same feel now as the houses did so it's kind of a little evolution in the series.

PN: For the blurred effect do you do that digitally or do you use a lens baby?

BC: All digital man for a couple of reasons. That's probably one of the biggest questions I get, especially from fellow photographers or photo geeks or whatever. Two reasons I do it digitally is 1) I don't always know where I want the focus to go when I photograph them. Sometimes when I'm staring at a scene and I'm captivated and I know what I want and I know where it's going to go. Sometimes there's something that's interesting to me and I don't know why and I'll figure it out later. 2) I'm not stuck to an optical plane of focus, that's the fun part and I can make it meander throughout the scene wherever I want. Selections and gaussian blur are my friends.

PN: Are you a Canon or a Nikon?

BC: Oh, Coke or Pepsi, I listen to the Beatles. I happen to have a Canon I'm not dogmatic about it, I don't really care and it's just another tool for me. I got the Canon because at the time the Digital Rebel XT was the most affordable SLR for average joes like me. If you want an SLR you either had a big fat pro one that you sold your car for or you got this one, so I like this guy. Now the market's pretty wide open I'm actually just waiting for the digital backs for medium and large formats to come down to where I only have to sell one vital organ instead of three because they are about $20k-$30k right now. I have my large format cameras and my medium format cameras waiting for the digital backs.

PN: Do you have a day job?

BC: Yes, of course I'm an artist so I have to have a day job. I am a teacher. I teach other kids how to do weird stuff in photoshop basically. I'm doing the adjunct shuffle at the moment teaching at a couple of different schools this summer. At Richland College I teach intro to Photoshop and digital photography and at UNT I'm teaching 2 sections of a computers and art class which is Photoshop and Illustrator. It varies from semester to semester.

PN: Do you create art with any other medium besides photography?

BC: I have not in years. Through an undergraduate studio art degree I took metal smithing, painting, drawing, sculpture you name it and I really like them all. I think if i was born in the 1500's I could be a Renaissance Man and just make art of all shapes and sizes of media. But for me at least these days I think it's really hard to do multiple things well. I like to focus on what I do, and honestly time. Between day job and artwork I don't have a lot of time to explore a lot of other things, especially with software changing every other year I have to keep up with that as well which makes the teaching part fun as well. It doesn't stay the same.

PN: How large do you blow up your prints?

BC: For the current show this is large large work for me and to kind of split hairs a bit they actually aren't blown up, they are this size. The largest in the show is 45” x 75”, I actually couldn't fit the piece of plex in my Jeep Cherokee to bring it to the gallery so I had to get it shipped. The thing is it's going to pull you in it's going to occupy so much of your visual field that you're really mentally be able to get in to the picture and imagine yourself immersed in the environment. Because hopefully they hook you with a strange fairytale-like visual quality but once you're in there there's kind of an ominous overtone. They're a little dark and there's a dark corner that's blurry. I like the duality of the thought exploration but feeling “I'm a little unsettled, I don't know if I'm happy.”

Back to the size of the prints, what I actually do is segment shooting. I would shoot a bunch of different parts and stitch them all together. That way even though I have a regular plain digital camera I can get large images without having to blow them up and lose some quality. It's just taking tools and knowing how they work and then bending them to your will. That's how I teach, is this is how this works because in the creative mind artists always take something that has a nice purpose in the real world and make it their own and use it in other ways.

PN: When you photograph houses do you just drive up and hop out? Do you knock on their door?

BC: No, I don't knock on the door. I can't imagine trying to explain to someone why I would want to photograph their house at night. I don't intrude or anything, I don't get in anyone's backyard or walk on their lawn. I'll get on the sidewalk or something like that if I need to. I start off late at night so people are settled and comfy and in their homes so I have less interaction. I don't want to scare anybody, if there's an open window I'm not gonna stand outside with a tripod. Every once in a while I do have an interaction. One night I got a little excited and got out a little earlier than I normally would around 9 at night. So I'm on the sidewalk photographing this house. They had this Fisher Price looking swing but it was the dark corner of this yard hung way up in this tree and I thought, well that's kind of cool I'll start shooting that, so I'm working away on my knees kind of set up low on the sidewalk in front of this house and the neighbors pull up. I get a little nervous and think well, this isn't good it's kind of hard to start chatting someone up at night with a tripod and camera. So he kind of looks and strolls inside and I think well okay I'll just pack up and leave that's not cool. I'm walking off and the door of the house I'm photographing opens up and the lady is like “What are you doing? You photographing the house?” And I said, “Well yes I'm trying to you know, take a picture of your swing.” And this is what she asks. Not who are you, but “Why would you take a picture of that?” So I made some little books of my work that I keep with me when someone says “What are you doing?” I can say, “Here, this is what I'm doing.”

PN: If you could bring anyone back from the dead and fight them to the death, who would it be?

BC: That's a good question. I'm not going to plagarize fight club because Ghandi would be a good answer. Who would I want to just kick the crap out of? I guess Hitler's too easy of an answer. Who would be a good challenge of a fight? How about Napolean, that'd be pretty funny. I have a good reach on him so I like my chances.

PN: Do you find that in life you moon more or get mooned more?

BC: You know I don't get mooned a lot so I'll definitely have to say I do the mooning. I'm not afraid, I've been known on occasion to do the mooning. More so in the past than the recent history. But just beware, it's out there. I guess if I wanted to blind someone and run away at night while I'm photographing their house I could moon them and then get away.

PN: That would be a great way to not look like a child molester at all.