Common Ground
I attempt to use photography as a vehicle to engage viewers with personal, ecological and cultural issues of the environment. And also as a means to examine and explore these relationships while attempting to draw connections to that which creates a sense of place vs. benign images of landscape. Much awareness of the environment and its issues revolves around "doom and gloom" problems, which build fear and cynicism and ultimately apathy (or at least feelings that individuals can do very little towards ecological preservation, restoration and a sustainable way of life). As an artist, I am committed to transforming the way individuals interact with the world around them while providing a means to interpret and share these interactions, hopefully giving way to community connections and a greater sense of place (or affinity for the local). Children and adults need to witness, first hand, the wonders of nature on a local level and in their own back yards, not just the grand of the national parks. Through these images I look to create some of that experience and investigate these ideas using the medium of photography as an exploratory and expressive tool.
At best I hope my photographs work as compelling testimony and as persuasive descriptors highlighting the magic and potentially sacred that can be found in our immediate environs. At a minimum, I wish to expand and clarify my personal view and understanding of environmental issues within a cultural context through the use of photography. I hope to make visible these internal and external connections while reflecting the significance of a sense of place and hoe it relates to culture. In this way photographs can illustrate our collective memory and bridge personal geography and lived experience with the cultural history of place and provide opportunities for us to examine our role in relationship to it.
At best I hope my photographs work as compelling testimony and as persuasive descriptors highlighting the magic and potentially sacred that can be found in our immediate environs. At a minimum, I wish to expand and clarify my personal view and understanding of environmental issues within a cultural context through the use of photography. I hope to make visible these internal and external connections while reflecting the significance of a sense of place and hoe it relates to culture. In this way photographs can illustrate our collective memory and bridge personal geography and lived experience with the cultural history of place and provide opportunities for us to examine our role in relationship to it.
Quest for Meaning at Halftime
Quest For Meaning at Halftime was an exhibit (the second) with my long time friend Don Fike in 2000.
see 1. to perceive by the eye 2a. to have experience of; undergo b. to come to know, discover 3a. to form a mental picture of b. to perceive the meaning or importance of c. to imagine as a possibility.
We are visual animals.
When my first child was born more than twenty-one years ago, exhausted as I was, I held her and looked at her for the remainder of the night through the next day and the next, in awe of this being. I couldn't take my eyes off her. This experience didn't change with my two subsequent children. One moment they didn't exist, and then there they were in front of my eyes. Birth: common experience that innumerable humans and other species have witnessed. With the death of my parents a number of years ago, I personally faced the impact of the natural cycle of life and death--another experience common to most people.
I have always turned to elements in nature for some kind of explanation of those big questions--curiosity and wonder, chaos or order, space and time. Those artifacts from my immediate landscape that I use in my photographs--rocks, skulls, plants in and out of my garden--provide some of the clues for me. Whether with my camera or in the darkroom, I attempt to combine these perceptions abd ideasm ti put together objects or images of objects. I try to put my thoughts on photographic paper in order to look at, to examine more closely, to see more claearly some kind of visual evidence--proff. Even if it is only my proof.
It is as if through looking, I will find some glimmer--just a glimpse, maybe--of understanding. If I can just look hard enough, I might see it. I might get it.
Don and I have been friends for more than twenty-five years. We have shared our photographs and our ideas about photography with each other through all of this time. In this exhibition, we put our photographs out there for others to see in like manner.
see 1. to perceive by the eye 2a. to have experience of; undergo b. to come to know, discover 3a. to form a mental picture of b. to perceive the meaning or importance of c. to imagine as a possibility.
We are visual animals.
When my first child was born more than twenty-one years ago, exhausted as I was, I held her and looked at her for the remainder of the night through the next day and the next, in awe of this being. I couldn't take my eyes off her. This experience didn't change with my two subsequent children. One moment they didn't exist, and then there they were in front of my eyes. Birth: common experience that innumerable humans and other species have witnessed. With the death of my parents a number of years ago, I personally faced the impact of the natural cycle of life and death--another experience common to most people.
I have always turned to elements in nature for some kind of explanation of those big questions--curiosity and wonder, chaos or order, space and time. Those artifacts from my immediate landscape that I use in my photographs--rocks, skulls, plants in and out of my garden--provide some of the clues for me. Whether with my camera or in the darkroom, I attempt to combine these perceptions abd ideasm ti put together objects or images of objects. I try to put my thoughts on photographic paper in order to look at, to examine more closely, to see more claearly some kind of visual evidence--proff. Even if it is only my proof.
It is as if through looking, I will find some glimmer--just a glimpse, maybe--of understanding. If I can just look hard enough, I might see it. I might get it.
Don and I have been friends for more than twenty-five years. We have shared our photographs and our ideas about photography with each other through all of this time. In this exhibition, we put our photographs out there for others to see in like manner.
Body Language
Body Language (1990), was a visual investigation of private psychological fears one anticipates while being a young mother of three children, when my own mother unexpectedly passed away. I attempted to make visually compelling and ambiguous darkroom photomontages which reflect cautionary tales of childhood dangers while bordering on the bizarre, through their very visceral compositing of organic materials (stone, foliage and insects) superimposed, or juxtaposed on the gestural torsos of my children.
Symbiotic Equivalence
Symbiotic Equivalence:
Parallels between visual representation, processes of nature and photography.
I attempt to use some of the ideas and tools of science with the modes and techniques of art in an effort to inform and bridge scientific and aesthetic inquiry and experience.
While on Isle Royale, I began to photograph lichens. Initially I was attracted to their unique visual qualities, wild and evocative. With more in depth investigation and exploration I was intrigued by what I began to discover about the life form itself. Lichens are complex composite organisms made up of two and sometimes three different biological kingdoms, usually a fungi (an organism that lives by absorbing nutrients from organic matter) and a photosensitive partner (green algae, cyanobacteria or both) growing together in a symbiotic relationship. The composite form is very different in appearance from the free-living algae or fungi. Usually this relationship is mutually beneficial and rarely is it harmful. I felt there was a lesson to be learned here, a parallel (to the process of symbiosis) if you will, if I could just begin to grasp it…and more importantly, address symbiosis in visual form to better understand its nuance.
I began to experiment and ruled out a variety of photographic techniques while quickly finding that I had to start with what I know. Thus I made images of more and more lichens, algae, and plant forms in general, and wanted to incorporate their inherent formal characteristics into this work. Historically, I’ve used traditional photographic processes….as well as 19th century photographic processes (cyanotype, kallitype and salted paper) for their photographic and descriptive qualities as well as their abilities to be applied and combined in a painterly manner. I have always combined various elements found in nature together in my imagery through combination printing or multiple exposure techniques as a way of creating “new” realities based on existing visual information, looking for analogous or new relationships.
In my explorations, I began combining these photographic processes in hopes of illustrate\ing or synthesize\ing this understanding, two processes combining… to form a different whole, creating hybrid–like results (kallitype and cyanotype). I soon discovered that the element of the unknown (combined with the known methods and techniques) was very intriguing as well as challenging.
I was also interested in the visual representation of these concepts and hoping that through this process of investigation and exploration, I might discover other visual forms and strategies (connections made between content and media) that speak to the equivalents of the symbiotic relationship. Ultimately, I found that I am searching to find the relationships between all three; the visual form, the photographic processes and the symbiotic structure.
More clearly, the main goal for this project was to find other strategies that might provide greater understanding (perceptual or otherwise) of these and other relationships between science and art. Knowledge, or awareness gained through science and art can sometimes transform or illuminate the converse experience. Using photography as pure observation and direct recording plus the use of combination printing techniques to create complex visual constructions is my attempt to understand the symbiotic structure through practice…as well as creating images that might incite this transformation of experience and understanding in others.
--Deborah Ford
Parallels between visual representation, processes of nature and photography.
I attempt to use some of the ideas and tools of science with the modes and techniques of art in an effort to inform and bridge scientific and aesthetic inquiry and experience.
While on Isle Royale, I began to photograph lichens. Initially I was attracted to their unique visual qualities, wild and evocative. With more in depth investigation and exploration I was intrigued by what I began to discover about the life form itself. Lichens are complex composite organisms made up of two and sometimes three different biological kingdoms, usually a fungi (an organism that lives by absorbing nutrients from organic matter) and a photosensitive partner (green algae, cyanobacteria or both) growing together in a symbiotic relationship. The composite form is very different in appearance from the free-living algae or fungi. Usually this relationship is mutually beneficial and rarely is it harmful. I felt there was a lesson to be learned here, a parallel (to the process of symbiosis) if you will, if I could just begin to grasp it…and more importantly, address symbiosis in visual form to better understand its nuance.
I began to experiment and ruled out a variety of photographic techniques while quickly finding that I had to start with what I know. Thus I made images of more and more lichens, algae, and plant forms in general, and wanted to incorporate their inherent formal characteristics into this work. Historically, I’ve used traditional photographic processes….as well as 19th century photographic processes (cyanotype, kallitype and salted paper) for their photographic and descriptive qualities as well as their abilities to be applied and combined in a painterly manner. I have always combined various elements found in nature together in my imagery through combination printing or multiple exposure techniques as a way of creating “new” realities based on existing visual information, looking for analogous or new relationships.
In my explorations, I began combining these photographic processes in hopes of illustrate\ing or synthesize\ing this understanding, two processes combining… to form a different whole, creating hybrid–like results (kallitype and cyanotype). I soon discovered that the element of the unknown (combined with the known methods and techniques) was very intriguing as well as challenging.
I was also interested in the visual representation of these concepts and hoping that through this process of investigation and exploration, I might discover other visual forms and strategies (connections made between content and media) that speak to the equivalents of the symbiotic relationship. Ultimately, I found that I am searching to find the relationships between all three; the visual form, the photographic processes and the symbiotic structure.
More clearly, the main goal for this project was to find other strategies that might provide greater understanding (perceptual or otherwise) of these and other relationships between science and art. Knowledge, or awareness gained through science and art can sometimes transform or illuminate the converse experience. Using photography as pure observation and direct recording plus the use of combination printing techniques to create complex visual constructions is my attempt to understand the symbiotic structure through practice…as well as creating images that might incite this transformation of experience and understanding in others.
--Deborah Ford