Paul Karabinis

PAUL KARABINIS – WEBSITE
3919 Oak Street – Jacksonville – Florida – 32205 – 904.962.8962 – pkarabin@unf.edu

Paul Karabinis is Assistant Professor of Photography at the University of North Florida, Jacksonville. From
1982 until 2007 he served as Director of UNF’s University Gallery. He has organized numerous exhibitions and
authored several catalogs including: Gathering Light: Photographs from the Collection of Joe and Jennifer
Duke, University of North Florida; Telling Stories: Contemporary Tableau Photography, Jacksonville Museum
of Contemporary Art; and History/Mystery: The Photographs of Jerry N. Uelsmann 1957-1993, Samuel P. Harn
Museum of Art, University of Florida. Gainesville. In 2005, a chapter in Maggie Taylor: Landscape of Dreams
(Adobe Press) was devoted to his commentary on Taylor’s digital collages. Karabinis also wrote the introduction
to Jerry Uelsmann: Other Realities, a monograph published by Bullfinch Press in 2005. In 2006 he wrote the
catalog essay and image commentaries for Sheltering Eye: Selections from the Prentice and Paul Sack
Photography Collection, an exhibition organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville. Currently,
Karabinis is curating an exhibition for MOCA Jacksonville focused upon the photography collection of Sondra
Gilman and Celso Gonzalez-Falla. His paper, Balancing Act: Idea and Process in Photography, was presented
at the 2009 Southeastern College Art Conference in Mobile, Alabama. A paper on the UNF/MOCA Jacksonville
merger was presented at the 2010 College Art Association’s Annual Convention in Chicago. In October of 2010
his paper, Alternative Photography as Pedagogical Tool, was presented at the Annual Southeastern College Art
Conference in Richmond, Virginia.
As a photo historian, I have a keen interest in early practitioners who understood photography as a
hybrid printmaking process that relied upon light sensitive chemicals instead of etching acids and
inks. While my initial exploration of historical processes was little more than a technical exercise, I
was quickly attracted to the serendipitous aspects of applying a light sensitive emulsion to watercolor
paper. It is virtually impossible to coat the sensitizer with precise consistency from print to print or to
predict exactly how the final print will look. In a medium heavily based upon standardization of
materials, preparing my own photographic paper has become a welcome relief to the predictable and
uniform look of the conventional photographic print.
Most recently, I have introduced digital techniques to the production of negatives used with historical
processes. If the computer was initially little more than a technical aid that hastened the making of a
negative, it has become an indispensable part of how I visualize my pictures. Most significant is how
the computer has transformed my understanding of photography from an act defined by a split
second at a given aperture, to an open-ended process with unlimited visual possibilities. To put it
another way: I use the camera to take photographs and the computer to make pictures. This
distinction may seem trivial in a post-photographic era but it has broadened my understanding of
how a photograph can be made, how it can look, and how it can function as a picture.
My current work revolves around tabletop collages composed of preexisting pictures (film, digital,
and drawn) in combination with three-dimensional objects and a preference for backlighting.
Through attention to how scale can be manipulated by vantage point, object size, and juxtaposition of
foreground/background, I search for that wonderful ambiguity that results when reality is seen as
representation and fact begins slouching towards symbol.