Eva Chertow

= Division III =

This article is part of a Climax    Div III Issue. By Kate Abbey-Lambertz, Photo Editor.

Lightspan: A Study in Gradual Repitition is the culmination of Eva Chertow’s photography Division III. Like Eva, it’s complicated, and the further you get into the series of works, the deeper it gets. These works are Eva’s experiments with time, a study she takes seriously and is personally invested in, but one that she irreverently connects back to sitting around in high school with friends “smoking pot and talking about science.”

Many of Eva’s projects are sparked by books she’s read. She started formulating her studies of time while reading sections of The Sound and the Fury, its personal significance denoted by a symbolic tattoo on her forearm. “I picked a topic that everyone thinks about” Eva remarked, “but also one that corresponds very much to my own obsessions and neuroses every single day.”

After describing the serious technical constraints of her work, Eva excitedly talked about the LiarCard, a service that records phone calls and analyzes conversations for truthfulness, which she used to create one of the works in her show. “It’s a total parody of what came before,” she said enthusiastically, adding more seriously, “But at the same time it’s exactly like everything else I’m doing. Measuring the immeasurable, using technology to quantify the abstract.”

“For me, some of this stuff is very heavy. But it’s also not. I just don’t want to take myself too seriously.” Eva attributes her attitude about art to few things. At “a crazy art school” in Amsterdam where she studied abroad, she was struck by the notion that “art is a part of your life and life is a part of your art. It’s not just this crazy anxiety stress, it’s about enjoying what you’re doing.”

Eva has been doing photography since tenth grade, and she describes the photo room and her high school teacher—“a hilarious guy, angsty, chain-smoker, smelled bad, very grouchy and grumpy”—as her saving grace. She recalls him telling her, “He never took pictures of anything beautiful. Because that was too easy.” Eva said, “So he would find something that wasn’t beautiful and make it interesting through his photography. And somehow that one phrase has been so influential to me and still is.” Now, Eva uses photography to create a balance in her life. “What has stabilized me and grounded me was feeling confident in the work I’m doing. I think once you have that everything falls into place.”

Eva will miss her committee, Jean Marie Casbarian and Karen Koehler, and the Film/Photo building when she leaves Hampshire, hopefully on the way to an AmeriCorps position in Austin in the fall. “I think Div III is so spectacular because you have a group of people telling you that your job is to do exactly whatever you want to do every single day. The work that you’re the most passionate about. And I don’t know if I will ever have that again. I hope I will.”