Photo Exhibition

FIVE SOLO SHOWS

September 14 – November 17, 2017
The Edouard de Merlier Photography Gallery
Cypress College

This autumn Cypress College is honored to exhibit the works of five
accomplished female visual artists who utilize, in their individual
practices, radical approaches for create photographic works. As
photography pushes forward in the digital space at a rapid speed, it
is imperative that the Photography Department share contemporary
artists who have not succumbed to the motto that, “Film is Dead.”
These artists still use traditional, “historical” processes such as
pinhole, lumen prints, collage, photograms, and other alternative
processes but in a new inventive way. Each of these artists use a
labor-intensive process-based exploration, with many of them still
using an analog darkroom to develop their prints. These five artists
explore current and historical “landscapes” wherein the past affects
the current, the current affects the future, and the collision between
the two create a new history with uncertain consequences.

In Ginny Cook’s series Natural Selection, she cuts out singe
words, lays them out on a table in her studio, photographs them,
and later develops them as silver gelatin prints. Each of these words
indicates an endangered or extinct flora or fauna, connecting our
own mortality with the fragile environment around us. Her use of
language and word play is rendered completely monochromatic by
never sharing any actual plant or animal imagery. Without any visual
cues to that which these words refer, the viewer is left questioning
where they stand in relation to these words and what personal
experiences are conjured up upon seeing them. Cook hopes to
expose our connection to nature, and these images leave the viewer
wondering about the larger operations of our day to day life, and
ways in which these words and phrases affect us.

Among this group of artists, is the newest and first full-time female
photography instructor at Cypress College, Julie Shafer. Often
working directly with nature, Shafer is interested in working in ways
that allow the terrain to make it’s own record on the photographic
surface. In her series Wait ‘til You See the Devil’s Punchbowl, Julie
went to coastal Louisiana, and the bayous of the Atchafalaya Basin
to record the terrain that has been altered by years of mining. Shafer
has used a few methods for creating this work; a 4×5 camera and
film records only the red spectrum of light in oil fields, contaminated
sinking bayous, and defunct oil platforms, and a series of lumen
prints are a record of a chemical reaction between the silver in the
photographic paper, the sun, flora and contamination from cracked oil
lines that have been in the waters for decades.We are seeing
something the naked eye can’t see, much like we don’t typically see
photographic paper, the sun, flora and contamination from cracked oil
lines that have been in the waters for decades.We are seeing
something the naked eye can’t see, much like we don’t typically see
the ever-changing deviation of the physical landscape.

Kristine Thompson’s series Images Seen to Images Felt also
investigates this idea of social and political history, however as seen
through the lens of current events. Thompson often watches and
researches the images that news systems are displaying and how
they are representing photographic imagery to the public. She
focuses a lot of her work on death and mourning, a topic that is
constantly streaming to us on contemporary news outlets. She will
take her laptop into the darkroom, hold a silver gelatin piece of paper
directly to the screen, and allow a transfer to happen from screen to
paper. In many of the images, you can still see a sliver of a bar
indicating where she had paused the broadcast or blurry icons of the
Internet address bar. While these details are not in every image, she
never attempts to hide that fact that the “original images” were not
her own. These are stories of and by the public and thus the use of
the images is seemingly universal. When installing them within
gallery spaces, she groups them together based on both formal and
emotional connections that may otherwise not have been discussed.
She also displays both positive and negative prints, only suggesting
further how our news is being shared with us and how it affects us
upon seeing it.

Carly Steward taking this concept into play in the most hands on,
physical kind of way with her work Pages. Steward takes art history
books and lands on an image that strikes her interest. She will then
cut around the outside of the image leaving a shape in the frame of
the paper. From the cut out shape, you are able to see the images
from the following pages through the initial cutout. She will then
continue this many layers deep, perhaps passing on some images or
only cutting out a portion of that artist’s painting, sculpture, or
drawing from the book. When she is complete with the handiwork
and craft portion of each book that she has dissected, she will then
photograph the object making it whole again. Like Thompson, she is
allowing us to see insights of a history lived, however fragmented,
broken, or inconclusive it may be. By photographing them at the end
of the project, she is trying to present to us a history that has been
patched together – a history that we may only have gotten bits and
pieces of depending on the person telling the story and that this is
the history we are to move forward with.

Building on this idea of the history that we know and the history that
has been laid out before us, Cathy Akers most recent series Open
Hearts, Open Land explored three current communes here in the
United States. She collaged together historical images with
photographs she took while living at, and, visiting these communes
for this project. The viewer can feel the tension of her splicing
together these images, the past and the present, as well as the
tension of her being an outsider in an environment built upon
revolutionary zeal and community. Akers admits that while she
together these images, the past and the present, as well as the
tension of her being an outsider in an environment built upon
revolutionary zeal and community. Akers admits that while she
respects and understands the ideals that these communities were
created upon, they don’t quite account for the changes within the
current social and political landscape.

The five solo exhibitions will be displayed in the main lobby and
corridors of The Edouard de Merlier Photography Gallery, located
just outside the Photography Department at Cypress College,
beginning on Thursday, September 14, 2017 through November 22.
The show will be open Monday-Friday 9am-7pm and is free to both
students and the general public. Parking is available at 9200 Valley
View Street, Cypress, CA 90630 with Lots 1,2, or 3 closest to the
Technical Education Building 1. You will find the gallery located on
the second floor of TE1.

To see more from each of these artists, please visit their websites.
www.cathyakers.com
www.ginnycook.net
http://julie-shafer.com/home.html
www.carlysteward.com
www.kristinethompson.com