Walead Beshty, Three Color Curl (CMY: Irvine, California, August 22nd 2008, Fuji Crystal Archive Type C), 2009, color photographic paper, 50×90 inches. All Beshty images courtesy of the artist and Wallspace, New York.

Artists Walead Beshty and Eileen Quinlan talk about process and photographic reproducibility in this engrossing conversation on Bomb Magazine’s website. 

Walead Beshty: When I first showed the photograms they were accompanied by editioned sculptures; the edition closed when the casts wore out. I don’t think of the work, even the work that is “unique,” as singular—they’re all duplicates in some sense. If there is a unique work, it’s in the rules and context to which it is applied. I guess this is how I think of all artworks. My first photograms came from an appropriated source, generated from a drunken conversation with Dan Hug about a body of Moholy-Nagy’s—Hug’s grandfather—work that turned out not to exist.