Jerry McMillan went to junior high and high school in Oklahoma with his pal, Ed Ruscha. They came out to California in 1958 followed by their classmate Joe Goode, and the trio shared a house together and attended Chouinard. Eventually they all found studios on Western Avenue and Jerry, being the photographer in the group, made now legendary images of his friends in formative moments of their careers. His photos of Ruscha were often playful, including single-frame performances that Ruscha sometimes employed for conceptual art, such as the image of Ed in bed with three women (Ed Ruscha Says Goodbye to College Joys) which appeared in Artforum in 1967. McMillan developed this idea further by staging photos of other artists in narrative scenarios, for example picturing Judy Chicago in a boxing ring because he knew she was a “scrapper” fighting in a male-dominated art world. McMillan’s photographic archives of artists and friends from the 1960s, as well as his inventive, conceptually-crafted images of artists performing for the camera were collected in full by the Getty Research Institute.
McMillan’s own fine art explorations in photo-based media were equally conceptual, even philosophical. From the beginning, McMillan questioned the very nature of what a photograph was, and what it could be. Photography was still considered a secondary art form in the 60s, and McMillan sought to achieve the same critical inquiry that painting and sculpture were experiencing. He believed photography, like paint, was an artmaking tool with its own unique characteristics. When his wife was pregnant, he understood that she was a vessel, or container for a new life, so he decided to photograph her and fold the photo into the form of a box, calling the work Patty as Container (1963). It was the first example of what became known as photosculpture, an art form that he, and other artists like Robert Heinecken, developed throughout the decade, culminating in MOMA’s seminal 1970 exhibition, Photography Into Sculpture, curated by Peter Bunnell.
The current exhibition at Craig Krull Gallery assembles McMillan’s key explorations into photosculpture, including his work with photo-etched metals. Questioning whether the materiality of a photograph was limited to paper, McMillan used acid to etch the silhouette of his photographic images into thin copper and steel sheets. Some metal cut-outs stand up straight with wooden supports; others are incorporated in rolls of metal that appear to unwind off the wall; and others still line the top edges of metal lunch bags. In fact, the paper bag motif is a consistent shape and symbol in McMillan’s work, paralleling Pop Art’s fascination with the everyday object. McMillan regularly created photosculptures by folding his photographs into the forms of paper bags, or by mounting photographs inside actual paper bags, tearing holes in the sides to expose the interior images—they literally forced new ways of looking at photographs.
