Facing Time Together Series

Youth of Old Age Project

PX3 PRIX DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE PARIS HONORABLE MENTION link

18th Julia Margaret Cameron Award Honorable Mention

Solo Portfolio Presentation by Dek Unu Fine Art Photography Magazine link

Artist Statement

“Facing Time Together” is a collection of alternative photographic process prints. Mass media and social networks produce stereotypical images that define accepted norms of gender, age and occupational behavior. I counteract with images that pose questions and invite the active participation of a beholder.

I am an immigrant female-identifying artist entering the age of invisibility. This puts me into a position to explore and make visible the minoritarian, underrepresented and marginalized.

My work starts with a meditation. I look deep into things that pain me the most: inequality, isolation, rejection. The image emerges from the desire to help others cope with pain similar to what I experience myself. It is both therapeutic to me and positive in a sense that it creates space for dialogue and change.

Sometimes the image I select for the transfer is the original photograph I took. Sometimes the process is more complex. “Turning Over A New Leaf” was originally a chlorophyll print. I found the technique limiting in terms of the color palette. I wanted to incorporate the color blue symbolizing hope. This brought me to the technique I used for the whole project “Facing Time Together” – archival transfer to Arches 88 watercolor paper. The image I transfer is printed on a transparency. I prepare the watercolor paper for the transfer by cutting it to create the rough edge, then I brush the alcohol-based transfer medium on both sides of the paper. I overlay the printed transparency over the saturated paper and hand brayer the image into it.

I am an award-winning haiku poet as well as a photographer. I have been practicing the wabi-sabi way of living for over thirty years. My photographic art stems from cultural traditions that originated in Japan. Wabi-sabi is the appreciation of all things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete.

In working with alternative photographic processes, I found peace and contentment that comes from the harmonizing of my workflow with the concepts it is expressing. Every print I create is one of a kind.

I believe we most connect with others when we are most honest about ourselves. My background in haiku taught me to think in personal universal. My prints are made to connect with unique individuals.

Alternative photographic prints are never as perfect as commercial studio prints, but they have character. They are flawed but their imperfections are part of the philosophy and aesthetics I am communicating to the world.

***

when art is art

it is the blood

running through the veins

of the tree of life

when art is given

and received

it is the infusion

inseparably one with it

and undeniably you