Of a Certain Age

Philly Photographer RA Friedman Creates the Art of Antiquity the Old Fashioned Way.

by A.D. Amorosi

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Published: Aug 27, 2008

There's nothing digital about RA Friedman. He takes his photos with large-format gear. He uses traditional silver instant film stock. He decorates his studio like an arcane carnival backroom with tattered costumes available for all who wish to participate and get shot.

RA Friedman

"Maybe I was born in the wrong the century, but the antiquity of it all is something I've always connected with," says Friedman, who's turning AxD Gallery into an H.G. Wells-meets-Dr. Caligari Cabinet of Photographic Curiosities for Philly Fringe. He's tempted to dress up like an 1890s ringmaster — top hat, pince-nez glasses and all — for the occasion.

"I've always felt that my fascination with the old was more than just romantic and I work very hard not to have the sullying and antiquing of the images be a gimmick, but rather something I craft and purposely manipulate to achieve my own vision — one that bridges old and new."

Friedman arrived at this old, old-school aesthetic right before the Fringe in 2005 when a freezer at his parents' house in the Catskill mountains died and had to be emptied.

"Voila," exclaims Friedman. "There was all this film that my dad had frozen nearly 30 years ago, some very funky Polaroid film. I just wanted to use it up, so myself and two colleagues did a big free shoot."

But before that, he and his dad took a picture of a family friend. "I found the negative later and scanned it and was fascinated by what it did visually," says the photographer, who moved from the Catskills to his sky-lit studio at 22nd and Pemberton in 1995.

Rather than the faux sepia effect of those amber-tinged novelty photo sessions from Great Adventure, Friedman's frozen photos have the look of splashy oxidation — sometimes sexy and wasted, sometimes gloriously wretched, always stately.

As a painter with a background in set design and videography, Friedman naturally brings something theatrical to his aged photography for the 2008 Fringe. While you'll be able to spot him with his head buried deeply under the black focusing cloth of a photographer, his charges — that means you — can become everything from a lion-girl to a hermaphrodite to a snake and beyond, not unlike the mythic characters of 7 Faces of Dr. Lao. For Friedman, though, it's not just becoming a theatrical device. He insists that his participants become something else through their own design.

"I'm just an intermediary," he laughs. "The energies of the subjects are really important to me. It's more interesting to me to have the people I photograph mold me, than I them. The best collaborators are people who are open, adventurous, patient and who are more interested in enjoying the process than working toward a set goal."

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)

RA Friedman's A Cabinet of Photographic Curiosities, Aug. 29-Sept. 14, free, no reservations required, AxD Gallery, 265 S. 10th St.

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