This week I've asked Kate Breakey, James Pitts and Rachelle Thiewes to offer some insight into their working processes behind their pieces in our current exhibition, Photo Objects & Small Prints. Other features from this show can be found here, here, here and here.
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| Kate Breakey, Desert Cottontail Hand-colored silver gelatin print, Edition of 7 $1080 framed |
In 1834, William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877) saw that silver salts darkened in the sun and invented a photographic process he called “photogenic drawing” — in which images were made without a camera, the subject simply laid on chemically treated paper and exposed to light. This is the archaic process I use to make Las Sombras. These are the remains of living things — plants, reptiles, mammals, insects, and birds. They make their own image, a kind of shadow, which will last long after they are gone. Their ghostly imprints, are burned directly onto paper with light and with love to make a permanent record. I've made these ‘photograms’ of everything I find dead — from deer and coyote to bees and moths — as well as flowers and weeds from my back yard, in an attempt to document and chronicle the natural world which is my endless inspiration as an artist.