These artists collaborate to create images through the mail. Check out their William Woods exhibition

Collective terms give our lives a dimension. It opens and deepens our world, for example knowing that crows gather at a murder, owls at a parliament. A group of feeding vultures is called a wake (which you’ll read more about in a moment).

And of course it’s a collaboration when two artists work together. Awakening occurs through the collaborative creative work of Columbia College professor Scott McMahon and Philadelphia-based photographer and teacher Ahmed Salvador.

As 2024 approaches its successor, McMahon and Salvador’s work can be seen at William Woods University in Fulton. The exhibition shows the uniqueness of their collaboration.

We often imagine collaborative artists sharing the same physical space and finding closeness through the distance traveled. McMahon and Salvador achieve collective creativity through distance, sending materials such as exposed film and photosensitive paper or holey film canisters back and forth through the mail. Then they inevitably meet to further edit and unbundle their images.

This brings artists closer to a new vision, creating wondrous breaks in the image that bring the viewer closer to the nature of reality. While their show ran through Feb. 14 (reopening Jan. 13 after a holiday break), the Tribune exchanged emails with McMahon and Salvador, who answered questions together. Your responses have been lightly edited for style and clarity.

Tribune: If you can see this looking back, what characteristics in each other match what you want in an employee? What made you want to work together?

McMahon and Salvador: Early on, and we’re talking decades now… we began working together as students at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Although our individual works were and are very different, we have similar ideas and curiosity about the potential of the photographic process and particularly light-sensitive materials and how we might rethink traditional use and application.

Collaboration can be difficult, but we immediately found like-minded people in our dual artistic practice. We tend to have a similar reverence for materials, experiments, coincidences and the creation of images. All of this, coupled with plenty of playfulness and absurdity, still drives much of what we do today.

What was the impetus for this work this time? How much conversation occurs between the two of you beforehand or during work, and how much is simply responsive/intuitive?

The images in this work have been carefully selected from projects and experiments that have taken place over the last three or four years. We wanted to put together a handful of images that not only show different techniques and processes, but also have a similar structure and atmosphere.

The majority of our work takes place remotely. I live here in Missouri and Ahmed lives in Pennsylvania. As soon as an idea comes up, one of us sends the other light-sensitive material by mail. There may be simple instructions on the development process, whether to re-expose the material, add additional materials, etc. It’s more of an abstract request and response.

There is a certain level of intuition and reliance on chance, but having worked this way for years, we have also developed a certain level of control and consistency in our process and production. There are times when we actually work on projects together.

What materials are in play this time? What did the materials themselves require of you?

The materials in play this time include some of our perennial favorites: analog film with holes drilled into it that is then mailed, gunpowder, fireworks, firefly light, Play-Doh, video projections hand-applied by developers, sound, and other gadgets.

The prints themselves are large format pigment prints, with the largest measuring approximately 11 feet tall and 15 feet wide. Materials are obviously key to our process, so we tend to be picky about how we display them.

What words come to mind if you were to describe the exhibition based on mood and experience?

Our goal was to create an immersive environment in which the viewer can experience the work together. Since the Cox Gallery at William Woods is quite spacious, we used the movable walls to create a broken floor plan.

The environment also includes video components. Since many of our images are sequential, we animate our stills, which contain much of the destruction in motion that applies to our film. Much of the sound was also created by us and consists of a combination of ambient noise and our own electro-acoustic improvisations.

The title of the exhibition – Vulture House – refers to an actual abandoned building outside Philadelphia where vultures are known to reside.

Oddly enough, a group of vultures feeding together is called a wake. There is an awakening here.

What new facets or dimensions of the other artist’s approach did you encounter or discover this time?

It was a challenge for us to expand the format of our presentation to cover the large scale of the gallery, allowing the viewer to navigate through the work as an installation. We were fortunate to use high quality video projectors to enrich the gallery environment.

Overall, this is our way of illustrating the way we push the photographic material to the limit of its silver shackles.

Find out more about the artists’ collaboration at https://www.fireflyletters.com/.

Aarik Danielsen is the Tribune’s features and culture editor. Contact him at [email protected] or by phone at 573-815-1731. He is on Twitter/X @aarikdanielsen.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: How artists in Columbia, Philadelphia create unique images through the mail