Relaxing Realism – Philip Ringler & James Saxon
Relaxing Realism is the conceptual photography collaboration of Philip Ringler and James Saxon, a duo known for their ambitious and meticulously crafted photographic work. Since 2012, they have created three major projects that explore themes of artifice, ritual, simulation, and the shifting nature of reality. Their work seamlessly blends fine art photography with technical innovation, resulting in striking, thought-provoking images.
Philip leads the conceptual development, sketching initial ideas and designing lighting, while James specializes in engineering, set construction, and special effects, including pyrotechnics and mechanical triggers. However, their process is deeply collaborative, with ideas constantly evolving through their shared creative dialogue.
Philip Ringler, a photographer for over 30 years, holds a BFA in Photography from California State University, East Bay, and an MFA from John F. Kennedy University’s Arts and Consciousness Program. His work is driven by philosophy, cultural critique, and the exploration of “reality” within photography.
James Saxon, with a BFA in Photography from San Jose State University and an MA in Multimedia from CSU East Bay, is both a technical enabler and empathic visionary. His expertise in fabrication and experimental techniques brings their elaborate concepts to life.
Together, they push the boundaries of photography, creating images that challenge perception and engage with contemporary dialogues in art and philosophy.
It is my party, too.
It is my party, too.
2025
The birthday party demands that you will be celebrated.
Every year for your entire life.
One day a year.
You will be the center of attention.
You must show up.
It is your birthday.
This series explores the complicated emotional landscape of the obligatory American birthday party ritual. As a continuation of their 2011 series, “It’s my party!,” which revolved around Philip's birthday experiences in suburbia, this series honors James’ nuanced relationship to his awkwardly situated January 1st birthday.
It is complicated.
Philip and James, both gregarious introverts, share layered, paradoxical feelings about the performative aspects of the birthday party. It is simultaneously comforting and overwhelming, familiar and confusing; it is a deeply under-examined part of American society.
You make your way through a number of expected performances: hearing and responding to the words “happy birthday,” receiving gifts and opening them in front of witnesses, and expressing happiness regardless of how you feel about the gifts. Celebrants sing “Happy Birthday” at the honoree while they smile patiently, finally blowing out small lit candles on top of a decorated cake, which, when done properly, earns a polite round of applause, and when done poorly, causes a low murmur of sighs and nervous laughter.
You must blow out all of the candles.
Preferably in a single breath.
Make a wish.
Each year this event happens for the birthday person's benefit. It is considered rude not to participate. Yet birthday parties are not really for the birthday person, but for everyone else. As a ritual of love and care, one does not complain or examine birthdays. Art allows a space for reflection that transcends the personal and grants permission to cast a critical eye on the rarely criticized.
So here we are.
44 studio portrait style photographs feature James Saxon wearing a monochrome suit and a brightly colored birthday hat, 11 different birthday cake-like industrial objects, lit birthday candles, a table, a light grey tablecloth, and a neutral tan backdrop.
By removing documentary spontaneity out of the birthday photographs and adding theatrical repetition, the performance is decontextualized and disengaged from the anxiety of spectacle.
James is photographed in 4 poses for each of 11 “cakes,” including poses with his back to the viewer, facing forward, preparing to blow out birthday candles, and blowing out birthday candles. The candles are never fully blown out.
The industrial “cake” objects were not only selected as interesting found sculptures and their nod to the illusionistic “Is it Cake?” trope, but for their potent, introspective solemnity. The cold, dense inertia of steel and concrete coded in silent utility offers an antidote to the thick, powdery, hedonistic confection of technicolor frosting and processed flour. The calorie-less gears and rusted machine parts impose a moratorium on the ravenous sugar-laced shark feed that inevitably spikes and crashes as the ritual dissipates.
With the world always on fire, it may seem superfluous to explore something so innocuous and innocent as a birthday party, but it asks some larger questions. How much agency do we have in our own cultural development and where does free will and cultural relativism intersect? Can we design our own personal microcultures within the larger cultural context by choosing how we relate to and participate in these seemingly fixed rituals and conditions? What else do we do automatically without applying awareness and critical thinking?
This work, as with all of our work, aligns itself with philosophical traditions that question and deconstruct the idea of consensus reality being unchanging and rigid. Photography is particularly malleable, and because of its relationship to “the document,” it is a perfect tool to subvert dogmatic worldviews that preach the importance of one, and only one, “Reality.”
The photographic series has its own reality.
It is not about you.
It is about you.
It is my party, too.
All images are created in-camera with a digital SLR, studio lighting, and minimal post-production. The series is intended to be shown in its entirety, printed either 24”x36” or as grid panels of 4”x6” photographs. It may be exhibited in tandem with “It's my party!”
