The Photographic Oeuvre of Cameron Woodall:
Spirituality, Symbolism, Visual Narratives, and the Interpretive Role of the Viewer









Cameron Woodall (b. 1981) is a contemporary artist-photographer who has refrained from associating himself with any particular artistic style or movement, past or present. Why has he so emphatically disavowed such categorization, such art-historical labels? Certainly, Woodall is primarily an artist-photographer; however, he has developed his oeuvre through exposure to and experimentation with a wide variety of means. His many influences and sources of inspiration range from fine art and photography to literary and philosophical sources. Woodall’s fine art muses include the great Italian Baroque painter Caravaggio (1571-1610) and the innovative Northern Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528). According to Woodall:
The arts are not merely symbolic language but point to a spiritual reality that is complementary to a physical one. My art is a meditation on self and the connection to the mystical, in essence a microcosm of the macrocosm. My latest work is an interpretive analysis of the hero’s journey, how it has changed and stayed the same throughout history, but more importantly, how the stories can be applied to every life story…There is an implied narrative within this work because I have used personal experiences and applied these to literary formulas. There is a truth to myths…and in belief, realities can be found.
Woodall’s photographic inspiration derives from the diverse oeuvres of the contemporary photographers Vincent Serbin (b. 1951), Joel-Peter Witkin (b. 1939), and Don Gregorio Antón (b. 1976). In addition, Woodall avidly reads such great philosophers as Carl Jung (1875-1961), Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), and Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). Essentially, Woodall’s artistic processes and production may be regarded as the result of this amalgamation of intellectual stimulation and artistic experimentation. Woodall is a photographic artist who is attempting to articulate a theory of truth, reality, and belief. Rather than categorizing his work by style or technique, he views himself as a “soothsayer-alchemist,” experimenting through his art. Thus, both the artist and the viewer may experience the spiritual, symbolic, and narrative journey through Woodall’s photographic oeuvre. Through a discussion and analysis of several of Woodall’s works, I hope to establish that his quest for metaphysical insight via spiritual, symbolic, and narrative realms is not simply a private quest; but it is a quest that his viewers and critics will find enlightening, challenging, and personally valuable.
Woodall, as the current artist-photographer and “myth-maker,” regards his early work as largely “a learning experience.”
[Although] I still tend to experiment a lot and I teach myself new things about the medium every time I begin a piece. But my early work taught me that no one can tell me that what I am doing is wrong, it is my art, and no one else can do it…I think that I try to understand my own perception based on others’. I take those things that I agree with and bash them against those that I don't agree with and see what I get.
In addition to photography, Woodall has also indulged in ceramics, sculpture, and drawing:
I have done them all, though I was trained by painters and ceramicists. I have been doing some form of art since I was 6. I got my minors in undergrad in drawing and sculpture and still tend to use both. I loved my printmaking class with Robert Brown. I am now drawing quite a bit and my Hero's Journey work was basically mixed media. Installation, painting, drawing—all with a photography base. It goes back to that war of subjectivity in an object world.
His modus operendi has not changed significantly, and is also quite unusual. His works are each a quest for self-discovery as well as a quest for metaphysical contemplation. For Woodall, every “artist is a mythmaker” and he himself is a self-acknowledged “soothsayer-alchemist.” First, Woodall begins the creation process by drawing on his extensive knowledge of world myths, religions, theories, and cultures:
[from that vantage point] I make my own cosmology then choose the apex of the story and draw it. I draw it out in order to both realize what had been gestating as an idea and to utilize as a sketch. After working and reworking the design to highlight the points of the story and aesthetics I take that sketch into the studio.
Woodall uses the camera as a tool to document his visual narratives. Since the camera is merely a machine, it can only “see what I point it at and only I can tell it what to see.” The camera presents a personal point of view with an impersonal objectivity. Woodall purposefully constructs simple tableaux and stage-like settings with the intention of focusing on the energy of light, the body, and the narrative. This ritual-like process allow Woodall to be one of the “myth-makers” who represent their personal vision of reality through their oeuvres. In addition, Woodall thinks of the photograph as “both a window and a mirror. We can see it as an object unto itself, we can see the thing it portrays, or we can see ourselves looking at it. As Plotonius stated, the perceptible world signifies an imperceptible one.”
In the Le Celle series (figs. 2 and 3), the spiritual theme in Woodall’s oeuvre is powerful and profound, yet subtle. In the context of this paper, the term “spirituality” may be applied to anything that involves or relates to the human spirit or soul as opposed to physical and material things. Woodall ponders, “What is a spirit? It cannot be weighed, measured, or quantified. Can it therefore have a definition? Can a person have a spiritual experience?” In order to document a Capuchin monastery in Italy in his Le Celle series, Woodall spent many hours over the course of three months simply observing the rhythmic pattern of events as they unfolded within the monastery. Prior to his encounter with the Capuchins, Woodall usually worked in a style of digital photomontage he calls “metaphysical surrealism.” Nevertheless, Woodall does not regard the Le Celle series as a departure from his earlier work, but as a “logical conclusion.” In fact, the series helped the artist to define still further his developing theory “that belief can change reality and truth is subjective.” Although Woodall does not seek to define what or where a spirit is, he describes it “as energy and awe, the essence of life, found in connections and relationships, the spark of love and bliss. A person who contends that the physical world is the only reality must therefore not believe in thought or emotion.” Like Woodall, the artist-photographer Don Gregorio Antón also seeks to visually depict spiritual experiences and the spiritual realm in his oeuvre. According to Woodall, Antón “searches the depths of consciousness leaving us awed at magic manifested…Through his use of personal myth we find the connection between subjective knowledge and shared emotion. The final pieces are neither questions nor answers but are artifacts of memory and experience.” As in Antón’s The Rules of Tragedy and The Arc of Memory (figs. 4 and 5), the sensation of serenity and timelessness in the Le Celle series shows the viewer the peace and satisfaction that the spiritual journey can bring. Neither artist-photographer attempts to proselytize the viewer by espousing a particular religious belief system. Nonetheless, Antón’s oeuvre has far more mystical implications. Through his works, Antón seeks to create imagery “to help navigate and formulate my right to see [and] to accommodate the positioning of my soul in the world.” He then hopes to identify and isolate the small amount of “reality” that obscures perception so that he can guide and teach his viewers as they ponder his works. Though Antón’s intentions may be good, eradicating the viewer’s culture and identity is hazardous at best. What substitutes for the viewer’s culture and identity can he offer? By “purifying” his work of overt cultural associations, Antón has also “purified” his work of visual narrative or symbology that a viewer needs to adequately “read” a work. Because Antón “[seeks] to understand, rather than to be understood,” there are very few viewers who are able to appreciate and understand the full import of his oeuvre. Woodall emphatically rebukes this approach:
I am so tired of Artists who do not take responsibility for ideas. Or who can only attack other ideas instead of understanding or proposing new perspectives. In a way I understand that they don't want to be authoritarian but they happen to be the author of the work.
The sharp value contrasts and oftentimes ambiguous abstract shapes in both Woodall’s Le Celle series and Antón’s The Rules of Tragedy and The Arc of Memory are proclaiming to the viewer the universality and necessity of the spiritual journey. In defending Antón’s philosophy, Woodall is also defending his own:
These mystical experiences are times of revelation and insight. They are a part of being spiritual. Don Anton says he doesn’t talk about mysticism. But he does believe that the mystical appears around us all the time and it is usually explained away. He also talks about gaining knowledge, connections and relationships, and understanding oneself and the world.
Finally, although Woodall shot the Le Celle series at a Capuchin monastery in Italy, the religious specificity of the location is ambiguously portrayed to allow the viewer to chose his or her own spirituality. In Woodall’s oeuvre, he is primarily seeking to articulate “a theory of truth, reality, and belief…and [he uses his] art as a way to express [his] findings.” Again, Woodall has become the metaphysical soothsayer-alchemist as well as an artist-photographer. As he ponders these questions, he is also inviting the viewer to ask and reflect: “Is this a spiritual experience? Or is this life? I contend that depending on how one understands self and defines spirit it can be both.”
For Woodall, St. Quixote (fig. 6) is symbolic of the literary character Don Quixote, who is simultaneously a hero and an antihero. In fact, St. Quixote is Woodall’s self-portrait. As he explains:
A lot of my influences are literary, either fiction, myths, legends, or religions. Like the self-portrait as Don Quixote. I am Don Quixote! A man whose belief becomes reality. A man who was driven mad by books. A hero/anti-hero Sisyphus type. Comic and tragic. A person who is ready to take on life but doesn't have the right tools to do so.
Woodall’s St. Quixote is a study of a person whose erroneous, potentially self-destructive perceptions of the world must either change or that person will indubitably suffer the consequences of his misconceptions: “It is interesting to think of it in the way of self sacrifice for enlightenment, which is true. Or at least an understanding of self and casting off of misconceptions, a trial by fire often proves to yourself what resources you truly hold. And my desire for knowledge is insatiable, like the curious cat.”
St. Quixote is also an amalgamation of Don Quiote and St. George, symbolizing a person whose beliefs and perceptions have, or may yet become, reality. The saint has fashioned his own dragon out of book pages from Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote and his imagination.
The next major phase in the journey is that of revelation. I use Miguel Cervantes’ character Don Quixote to portray this stage. This literary hero is embodied here as a self-portrait. Most of my works are self-portraits but in this case it is more direct, because of my empathy for this character. I originally chose photography because of is connections to reality and my respect for the craft of Durer. I saw in photography the potential to make real what was in sketch form. Throughout my photographic career I had been taught to respect the integrity of the print surface, to print in a way to epitomize beauty and reflect reality. My revelation is that none of this is law. I am foremost an artist. As an artist I must choose how best to represent my reality. The Don knew this. He would not accept chivalry’s defeat, as I will not accept the prevailing post-stucturalist theories and nihilism. The Don believed in his inner truth so much that it became outer reality. He is the perfect example of how Truth can come from Belief, and how Reality can be neither or both...This image recalls the former images of St. George who was originally a pre-Christian dragon slayer. Pseudo-sexual in its connotations, I have pierced the beast that is mirror and object. The photograph itself is stained using hydro chromium toner, then wiped off. Part of the mirror like quality remains but mostly it is a shadow of its former luminous reflectance. I associate the piece to the old cast off book in likeness and color, they are both antiquated symbols no longer used, read, or understood by the masses. My work is largely based on things I have studied or observed. Because of the conscious intellectual involvement inherent within my work my peers are unable to connect to my reality. The Don had a problem very similar to this.
Even though the monster is imaginary, the saint is still badly equipped to do battle with any foe. Therefore, in Woodall’s St. Quixote, the St. George-Don Quixote personage also symbolizes, or personifies, the person who is willing to tackle a difficult task, but who is ill-equipped to do so. Like the skeletal brontosaurus in Vincent Serbin’s Metaphors of Greatness (fig. 7), Woodall’s saint does not seem to notice his weakness and vulnerability. Finally, St. Quixote is the symbolic exploration of the artist’s epistemological questions that the viewer may or may not venture with the artist. Regardless of whether the viewer is willing to consciously acknowledge Woodall’s epistemological theorizing, the symbology remains:
So words are less ambiguous than images, but are themselves images with a definition (this is why I love the Renaissance so much, every symbol had a definition). All of my symbols are a conglomeration of many of either the same idea with different symbols or the same symbol with different definitions…You read a work of art like a book.
Whether the symbols in St. Quixote and Metaphors of Greatness are “read” as intrinsic or extrinsic, they raise issues of epistemology in both the artist’s and the viewer’s minds.
In Fool’s Journey (fig. 8), the strong visual narrative of the subject matter invites the viewer to project himself or herself into the narrative. Fool’s Journey addresses but does not attempt to answer ultimately unanswerable metaphysical questions, as such, though the artist and the viewer may freely “discuss” these questions. This work may be Woodall’s most recent visualization of his theory of truth, reality, and belief:
I hunger for knowledge and through experience seek to gain spiritual insight. I use Belief as it manifests itself within Reality through perception and myth to understand my world and my spirit. These absolutes can be perceived through our ideals and actions. The symbols and stories change depending on culture or individual experience but the universal is glimpsed through these.
The text above the head of the young man is from the Tarot. As it ominously “hangs over his head,” the Tarot is exercising its control over the man; assumedly, the man will be doomed to search indefinitely for what he may already possess. In this work, as in St. Quixote, the unfortunate fool is the victim of his own self-inflicted misconceptions. Joel-Peter Witkin’s The Fool, Budapest (fig. 9) also explores the themes of being a fool and self-victimization; however, Witkin’s “images of the human condition” are far more disturbing and controversial. Like Woodall, Witkin also examines spirituality and how it impacts the physical world; however, unlike Woodall, Witkin explores the nature of spirituality through people who are often cast aside by society, including hermaphrodites, amputees, carcases, people with odd physical capabilities, fetishists and "any living myth . . . anyone bearing the wounds of Christ.” While Woodall invites his viewers to “step into the shoes” of the characters he creates, Witkins seeks to push back the culturally accepted boundaries of “normalcy and decency” and exploits the “shock value” of his subject matter.
In Fool’s Journey, the ambiguous landscape, incomprehensible text, and uncertain static figure in Fool’s Journey invite the viewer to remember or to imagine a similar journey or narrative. In addition, the viewer is able to project himself or herself into the work easily since the figure’s face is largely obscured from view. As human beings, we are fascinated by the faces of other human beings; therefore, the absence of a “readable” face allows the viewer to self-project.
Lazlo Maholy-Nagy said that photography has the ability to illuminate realities that cannot be perceived by the senses alone. The black and white print is both removed from reality and connected to the memory of a nostalgic past…I recall walking through museums seeing ancient artifacts and wanting to posses them and understand them. I want my photographs to evoke the same response in other people. The problem in art’s significance in the modern world is that it has been transformed from a sacred activity to an activity of artifact production. My working method, however, still holds the residue of awe and experimentation while I struggle with the rigidity of ritual storytelling.
Like, St. Quixote, the visual narrative in Fool’s Journey is condemning those who embark on a journey with inadequate provisions and knowledge. This theme is also present in Serbin’s Metaphors of Greatness as well as in Antón’s The Rules of Tragedy and The Arc of Memory. So, is the viewer meant to understand that the unknown or any new experience in life is to be feared and avoided at all cost? Certainly not. The remedy for “fools” who would embark on a journey without the necessary provisions and precautions is education, preparation, and self-knowledge. Though these artists ask the universally-asked metaphysical questions in their oeuvres, they too are still searching for the answers:
I want to know if there is a higher reality, and if so, how can we know it? I have always doubted the existence of this greater plane and that is why I first sought to learn about it. Rudolf Steiner proposed that the spiritual world is accessible by means of enhanced powers of thinking and result in a consciousness of self. Wanting to know the unknowable, yearning to break loose from corporeality, I used other people’s explanations and understandings. I then noticed similarities and connections within different cultures and religions. The more I studied, the more I was fascinated by their stories and consequently begin to understand more about myself. I recognized my own dreams and aspiration, fears and failures.
Through only a few works, Woodall’s quest for metaphysical enlightenment and personal fulfillment in his personal oeuvre may be shared by his viewers via his “artistic experiments” in spirituality, symbolism, and visual narratives. In the current post-modern era, American culture does not mandate that artists attempt to instruct or guide their viewers in any way; indeed, the culture seems to discourage any encoded message within art works. Nevertheless, the contemporary artist-photographers Cameron Woodall, Don Gregorio Antón, Joel-Peter Witken, and Vincent Serbin are each on a personal metaphysical quest that the searching, insightful viewer is invited to join. After interviewing Woodall at length and conducting extensive research, I have concluded that it is not only valid but mandatory in art works that artists explore their own psyches and life experiences in order to truly communicate with and instruct their viewers. In addition, Woodall’s positive viewpoint will hopefully influence the oeuvres of his fellow “myth-makers:”
Each person is a hero, together they make a society, but in turn this society makes them. Herbert Spencer agrees and says, “Before the great man can remake society, society must make him.” Nietzsche called for a Superman to change society, but I say it is Everyman that changes society. In this way every person can relate to the hero, because every person is a hero. All of my characters are tired yet stoic in their regard for the will to press on. The fool journeys into the unknown, John Henry struggles against it, and Don Quixote embodies it. These pieces are printed large in order to seem imposing and larger than life. This causes a quasi-sublime experience to capture the viewer. While traveling through Europe I found myself enraptured by the size and beauty of the murals of the Renaissance. I continue to look to these and to Baroque pieces for inspiration.


Furthermore, I believe that every artist may do this to a certain extent. Nevertheless, Cameron Woodall has more than adequately demonstrated that his photographic oeuvre exhibits profound metaphysical insight on both the private and public levels. He quite successfully endows his private quest upon his viewer via spiritual, symbolic, and narrative elements.