Light Sources - Photographs 1977-2005 (2011) “Like much of Welling’s work Light Sources taps into memories and emotions in the viewer, about darkness, strange places, and the wonder of that which attracts us for reasons unknown. It is a trope for the seductions of the quickly glimpsed, the half remembered, the partially understood, qualities that Welling wants to hold up, examine, and admire without piercing the fragile surface of their own fugitive grace.” -Carol Squiers, Artforum (1998). American artist James Welling creates work which challenges the technical and conceptual bounds of photography. In his abstract photographs of the 1980s he usually employed simple materials, like crumpled aluminum foil, draped fabric and pastry dough. Then in 1992 he began the series Light Sources, an open-ended accumulation of diverse portraits, landscapes and interiors. All these photographs indirectly refer to the process of perception and while many of the objects literally transmit light, the series acknowledges that everything we see reflects light and is also a source of light. The Mind on Fire (2014) Bringing together important experimental works and ephemera, this volume documents a watershed moment in James Welling’s photographic career. A seminal figure in the “Pictures Generation”—a group of artists working in 1980s New York—James Welling is best known for his pioneering use of photography and for engaging questions about art and the nature of representation. This book focuses on a particularly fecund period in Welling’s life, charting the works, influences, and shifting ideas he has been pursuing ever since. Chronologically arranged, it features works from the 1970s and 1980s interspersed with never-before-published watercolors, collages, notes, production stills, music, and other ephemera that provide insights into the working process of one of America’s most innovative and significant photographers.