Posts Tagged "Daylight Magazine"
KELIY ANDERSON-STALEY
Today’s installment in the PERSPECTIVES “Following Up” Series features Queens, New York-based photographer Keliy Anderson-Staley. Her 8” x 10” wet plate collodion tintype portrait, Jessica, was selected by juror Mary Ellen Mark and exhibited in the Center’s Portraits exhibition in 2009. Most recently, she was selected for the 2010 Light Work Artists-in-Residence program.
(Photo credit: Jessica by Keliy Anderson-Staley)
My interest lies in finding the unique visual markers of personality and in portraying faces that reflect the diversity of contemporary America.
Anderson-Staley’s series, Americans, examines photographic representations and how portraiture has shaped and still constructs historical and contemporary identities. By working with hand-mixed chemistry and a wooden view camera, her time-intensive process resists the instant image capture capabilities that have become the common practice of today.
The series also questions the use of photographic titles in determining the historicity of an image. By removing conventional indicators of one’s identity—such as last name, year, and geographic location—each image title in this series includes only the sitter’s first name. Anderson-Staley discussed her chosen use of nomenclature by stating:
Although the heritage of the individual may be inferred from assumptions we make about features and costumes, the descriptive language that might have been attached to such images in the past is deliberately absent. The viewer is therefore forced to suspend the kind of thinking that would traditionally assist in decoding these images in the context of American identity politics.
More images from Anderson-Staley’s Americans series:
(Photo credit: Dulce by Keliy Anderson-Staley)
(Photo credit: Helen by Keliy Anderson-Staley)
(Photo credit: Jesse by Keliy Anderson-Staley)
New Work:
(Photo Credit: Keliy Anderson-Staley from the Off the Grid series)
Her series of color photographs, Off the Grid, was featured by Daylight Magazine as a video-cast and was a runner-up for the Aperture Portfolio Prize. It also appeared in Camerawork and will be featured in an upcoming issue of Ahorn Magazine.
More of Keliy’s work can be found at www.andersonstaley.com
Keliy Anderson-Staley received a BA from Hampsire College and an MFA from Hunter College. She has taught the wet plate collodian tintype process at Bowdoin College, Hampshire College, and The Center for Alternative Photography, among others. Her tintype portraits have been exhibited at the Bronx Museum of Art, the California Museum of Photography, Jenkins Johnson Gallery (in both New York and San Francisco), Susan Maasch Fine Art (Portland, ME) and John Cleary Gallery (Houston, TX), and The Center for Fine Art Photography (Fort Collins, CO). Some of her tintype images are part of a traveling group show centering on alternative and historic processes that is currently in transit from the University of New England Art Gallery to the Art Gallery at Simmons College in Boston.
Read MoreNEW VISIONS // JUROR MICHAEL ITKOFF
“It’s an experimental show. It’s an interesting take on the myriad ways in which people can use photography to tell stories and to share their personal vision.”
Juror Michael Itkoff visited the Center for the artists’ reception of the “New Visions” exhibition. He also lead a gallery talk and reviewed portfolios the following day. This video is part of an interview with Itkoff about his selections for the exhibition. In the video, he contrasts work by featured artists Lorena Turner and Francesca-Renata Nicolae.
Michael Itkoff is a Founding Editor of Daylight Magazine, a print and online publication. Daylight has become one of the premier showcases for contemporary photography, by collaborating with established and emerging artists, scholars and journalists. Itkoff has been a reviewer for New York Photo Festival, En Foco, Critical Mass, ASMP and Santa Fe Center for Photography. He has been a recipient of the Howard Chapnick Grant for the Advancement of Photojournalism (2006), a Creative Artists Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Arts Council (2007), a Puffin Foundation Grant (2008) and recently published his monograph, Street Portraits, Charta Editions 2009.
Read MoreNEW VISIONS {JUROR MICHAEL ITKOFF}
(Photo Credit: Grate Butts by Joseph Schuyler)
“As one who daily traffics in images, I take seriously the interplay between vision and reality. I believe in the potential of photographic process to reform or re-envision our reality by presenting unique ideas and perspectives.”
Juror’s Statement:
Traditionally defined as having unusual foresight and imagination, visionaries have often faced negative repercussions for challenging societal conventions. Galileo Galilei, for example, was hounded by the Catholic Church for publicizing his observational hypothesis that the Earth revolves around the Sun and is not, in fact, the center of the universe. This is telling as the destabilizing effect of Galileo’s belief had the power to literally shift humankinds’ worldview off-center. Many more free thinking individuals in society have been persecuted as dangerous while still others have been celebrated for their clairvoyance, the acceptance or rejection being largely dependent on the historical and political context of the day.
Today’s world remains similarly dependent upon visionaries to look deeply at the world as it is and envision the potential successes and pratfalls of the future. Numerous essays have been written, for example, on the significant impact of creative science fiction writers in helping to shape the research and experimentation of scientists. By indulging in the imagination and sharing their thoughts, writers such as H.G. Wells and Jules Verne inspired legions of tinkerers to tease out potential facts and fantasies contained within the stories.
As one who daily traffics in images, I take seriously the interplay between vision and reality. I believe in the potential of photographic process to reform or re-envision our reality by presenting unique ideas and perspectives.
Although the digital age is not without its own challenges, the photographers in this exhibition, entitled “New Visions”, thankfully operated without fear of censorship or persecution. All of the photographers who took part in this show have struck-out into unexplored territory and attempted to test the limits of their image making ability as well as our perceptive faculties. While shaping this exhibition I was repeatedly confronted with visual information at once strange and disturbing. Overall I was quite impressed with the multiple applications of digital imaging technologies as well as the widespread use of seemingly outdated analog processes that collectively seemed to remake the world with fresh eyes and an open mind.
Michael Itkoff
Editor of Daylight Magazine
Michael Itkoff is a Founding Editor of Daylight Magazine, a print and online publication. Daylight has become one of the premier showcases for contemporary photography, by collaborating with established and emerging artists, scholars and journalists. Itkoff has been a reviewer for New York Photo Festival, En Foco, Critical Mass, ASMP and Santa Fe Center for Photography. He has been a recipient of the Howard Chapnick Grant for the Advancement of Photojournalism (2006), a Creative Artists Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Arts Council (2007), a Puffin Foundation Grant (2008) and recently published his monograph, Street Portraits, Charta Editions 2009.
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