Case Studies

Dave Freund

"Two aspects of Lumiere's work are key: first, cooperative conversations about the project, and secondly, their capability to execute what a photographer is after."

Since 2003 I have been photographing small town playgrounds. The first one sported a WWI cannon, a picnic area, a cornfield, a baseball field and a war memorial. Looking through swings, slides, merry-go-rounds and teeter-totters into this surrounding adult world the children would enter, I saw abundant narratives of American experience, embellished by delicate grey equipment. Such equipment has endured; the trenches carved by small feet under 1920s swings and around merry-go-rounds often run a foot deep.

I soon discovered that these familiar iron and steel playgrounds are fast disappearing, rapidly being replaced by structures of multicolored plastic and enameled steel. As with other vanishing species, one day they are everywhere, the next, gone. The preservation aspect of this project lends it urgency.

The project has taken me to some twenty states, resulting in an elbow to fingertip stack of proof prints. To give the work some shape, I took a bookmaking course taught by Douglas Holleley at the Visual Studies Workshop. I had 100 copies printed of a 45-page maquette for what I hope will be a larger book.

I then encountered Lumiere and discovered that the technology for reproducing photographs in small-run editions has been improving at a clip unknown to most photographers. Although the first imprint of my book was ok, the Lumiere version came surprisingly close to capturing the feel of my original prints, especially in the quality of light.

Two aspects of Lumiere's work are key: first, cooperative conversations about the project, and secondly, their capability to execute what a photographer is after. If I asked for half a grade increase of contrast with no overall increase of density, that is what the proofs showed. Further, I spoke to the person who did the adjustments and oversaw production. Prices are fair and delivery schedules are clear.

David Freund is currently Associate Professor of Photography at Ramapo College, New Jersey where he has chaired the Visual Arts program for twenty years. After receiving a B.A. in theater at the University of California, Davis, Freund earned an MFA from the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester. In 1996, Freund curated an exhibition of his extensive collection of "home made visual books," Scrap Book / Book Art," an interrogation of the cultural values and personal concerns suggested in books of personal ephemera.

Besides teaching at Ramapo, Freund has taught numerous workshops, including ones at the Center of the Eye, Aspen, CO; the Maine Photographic Workshop, and was visiting artist at Carleton College, MN. He also has taught at Pratt Institute and was a Dayton-Hudson Distinguished Visiting Artist at Carleton College, MN.

For his National Endowment for the Arts Grant, Freund photographed in and around gas stations in 47 states. He has also received grants in New York from the Creative Artists Public Service Program and the Institute for Art and Urban Resources.

Widely exhibited, Freund's work has been shown at Light Gallery, New York and the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House. His work is in several collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. A member of the Society for Photographic work for twenty-five years, Freund has participated on panels presenting his Photo Postcard Work.