Artist's Statement

Since the late 1980s, I have been creating still-life photographs, originally using antique processes, such as Vandyke and salted paper printing, invented during the earliest days of photography. In 2004, my method shifted dramatically, and now employs digital technology. Although contemporary media present different challenges than those of the 19th century, my work remains faithful to transforming real objects existing in time and space into non-reality based, allegorical imagery.

I have always liked my still life pieces to look like a kind of "Titanic debris field," as though they were found scattered at the bottom of the ocean. This stems in part from the first excitement at seeing images come up through the photo chemicals in the tray.

Each work in my series Beyond Words begins with a two-word phrase in current, common usage amongst English-speaking North Americans. The compositions, while based on idioms used in contemporary culture, resonate through shared symbology, inviting endlessly varied individual interpretation. The staged construct is discarded after being photographed. The resultant photograph is manipulated and becomes the final print, differing markedly from the original collage. By expunging this first phase, a greater valence is given to the final print, in the way that historical photographs are often all that remains of a person or monument, imbuing a sense of sentimentality. This is also intended to invoke an eerie distortion, since the time and space that the discarded collage once inhabited has been abandoned forever.

Select a thumbnail at left to view the work or click here for all images on one page.

 

Click here to read Beyond Words: Archaic Heritage, by Carolyn Gray Anderson