In my photography, I enjoy experimenting with different cameras and print formats.  Mixing images and creating double exposures allows for new ways of thinking about memories, places, and experiences.  Our minds begin to weave a web around the two represented images and come away with something more than one of the images could have given us singularly.

            Film is still my mode of creation.  I enjoy the tangible quality of manipulating a photo in the darkroom.  The wonder of seeing an image appear out of the paper never ceases to amaze me, and is something I cannot get from digital photography.

Retinal  

            Retinal is a series of photographs created by using a Polaroid instant camera that I bought at Goodwill for only three dollars. The flash goes off on every shot unless I cover it with my hand, the focus is fixed.  I often use film from EBay, which can deliver defective or expired film that results in strange light apparitions and patterns.  Many artists call this element of chance “happy accidents,” and indeed, some of my favorite photos reveal a collaboration between me, the photographer, and the camera’s film, which seems to be an entity working of its own accord.

            Experimentation is always important in one’s work, and finding beauty in the mundane is one of the many jobs of a photographer.  When starting Retinal, I wanted to get away from the square format of photographs.  The angular corners of a square often let in extra information.  A person’s field of vision is elliptical, and when composing a photograph, it’s usually an element that strikes me.  In order to focus on that initial element of interest, I created a circular filter for my Polaroid camera using blue painter’s tape and a hand-held hole-punch. 

            The elliptical format references the human retina.  The things that strike your fancy through any day may be very plain: an unlabeled sign, a lost apple, the contrast of two colors.  Seeing these sights is not about holding up a square viewfinder to “frame the shot”; it is about seeing an element that strikes your mind and makes you think, recall, wonder, compare, and desire to capture that element for future reference.  Even people who are incapable of seeing “outside the box” are said to suffer of a condition that suggests an elliptical plane of sight: tunnel vision. 

            I consider myself blessed with sight – my appreciation of vision has always been one of the driving forces behind my desire to create art.  The act of seeing, even the ordinary, offers us the chance to revel in the beauty we find in small places and spaces, yielding an exhilaration that keeps us all believing in the magic and gratification of trying to save the world in a photo.

            I’ve been working with mixed media and feminist issues since the beginning of 2006.  About 6 months into this new focus of my work, I read The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan (©1963). This book greatly influenced my work in the following months, and continues to spur mental reflection about the feminine mystique’s presence in my past, clinging to the women that I grew up around, unconsciously sliding from the tongues of relatives, friends’ parents, children’s books, or other young girls.  There were many minds in my small home town that had not escaped the idea of the feminine mystique that “makes certain concrete, finite, domestic aspects of feminine existence…into a religion, a pattern by which all women must now live or deny their femininity.” (Friedan, 38)

            Incorporated with painting and photography, I use embroidery, sewing, and fabrics deliberately, as a means of referencing my implied domestic purpose.  I want to use these techniques in a way that contradicts the traditional “pretty in pink” pastimes of women.  I also use symbols and patterns to suggest particular stories, games, and moral obligations (religion?).  Stories are a very important aspect of my work, and my work questions, challenges, and rejects stories of marriage, love at first sight, knights in shining armor, physical beauty, sex as a means of purpose, motherhood, religious righteousness, and patriotism.  I consider these stories catalysts for societal rights and rituals that distinctly influence our perception of identity. 

            Viewers of my work should recall stories from their lives that raised questions about their purpose and expectations about themselves and others.  I want people to think about the way we view one another – the way gender affects our identity.  Hopefully, my work will spur people to recognize if they have believed stories, not truths, and inspire change in the way they think about themselves or the other gender. I want people to become empowered, more confident, less apologetic, more honest, and brave.  I don’t want people to be jerks.  I don’t want to be a jerk.

            But we can’t have everything now, can we? 

            Can we?