In 1965, Jerry Uelsmann announced a theory he named "post-visualization" with regard to his unique photographic technique. The term refers to a "formal system of logic" attached to a type of work that is developed in a direction contrary to the artist’s original intention, based on a process of "realization and firm decision making," that took shape as a result of Uelsmann’s experience of the unpredictability of darkroom work.

Since then, many other artists have followed this form of expression; Maggie Taylor, Uelsmann’s former student and current wife, is among them. The couple’s working styles are similar, yet different. They differ in that Uelsmann uses analogue processes and Taylor digital, and in that Taylor’s work embodies the very spirit of post-visualization by creating mysterious imaginary image-worlds that transcend any era-based categorization with their borrowings from narrative structures and images formed by the "feminine fantasies" and "fairytale narratives" of Western culture.

The human cornea uses incoming light concentrated and filtered by the lens of the eye, forming shapes that then become images. We call this process "seeing." The things we see, the things perceived via our corneas, are stored by the memory devices in our brains, creating our worlds of vision and memory. Photographs are created through a process similar to the functioning of the human eye, but differ from the brain when it comes to memory and storage methods. In a camera, the medium used for photography, film and digital sensors fulfil a function equivalent to that of the human cornea. In today’s age, however, the creation of new visual and mnemonic orders has led to an almost unlimited number of different methods and rapid change. As it moves beyond the stage of simply observing objects with our eyes, the concept of "vision" has built ties with other worlds, transcending the physical dimension.

We have travelled far into dimensions where objects can be rendered visible or invisible without perception, experience or thought. Images today enable expression that is freer even than dreams, memories and imagination, recreating worlds that lived only in our minds. There is nothing that cannot be expressed. This is precisely the kind of image world that Taylor desires. A world where past and future can coexist; an expansive swathe of unexplored territory; a future land of her own desire - a homeland of her own. I believe this is Taylor’s own image-world, one full of the objects she likes, the animals and plants that she loves and the paradises of which she dreams. She seems like Lewis Carroll’s Alice, trying to remain forever in a young girl’s dreamland, not yet grown up. Who knows? Perhaps Maggie Taylor is Alice.

It only now occurs to me that it is the logic of post-visualization that has made possible the building of a "21st century dream factory," a plant for concerting desires into reality in today’s age.
- Park Young Sook

*image (left)
Maggie Taylor
Cloud caster, 2013
archival pigment print, 56x56cm
courteys of the artista and Trunk Gallery