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No.204,
1997 |
Photographs
by Ellen Carey
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Looking
at her recent work, it's easy to imagine Ellen
Carey as a painter, bucket in hand, splashing
oil and pigment into space to see how physics
and nature direct its flow. We see a vivid streak
of color that tapers at the end and streams
down a long panel of paper that is stick-pinned
to the wall. What we have is a proof of light. |
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Carey
is not a painter, but a gifted photographer
who has experimented with Polaroid materials
for 25 years and stretched the uses of Polaroid's
20X24 Camera for over a decade. She explores
the "insides" of the camera and lays bare
the processes of photographic imagery while
pushing the boundaries of its possibilities.
When
we look at her images, they seem to defy what
we know about photography and make us curious.
"How did she get this picture?" It's a persistent
question, most relevant to her mid- and later
work.
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Untitled,
1985
Untitled,
1987
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In
her early pieces, black and white self-portraits
and silhouetted figures, she applied swirls
of acrylic and ink to the surface of the photographs,
veiling and concealing the image. But, by the
mid-'80s she began manipulating the medium in
a new way, using Polaroid's large-format camera
and Polacolor ER film to create more abstract
portraits and figure studies overlaid with geometric
patterns taken from the natural world |
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Using
a kind of double exposure, Carey layered the
images, suspending heads or hands, in subtle
geometric designs in a way that confuses our
spatial perception but sets up a kind of unique
and compelling order. |
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"The
20X24 Camera allowed Ellen to build on what
she was learning," says John Reuter, director
of the Polaroid 20X24 Studio in New York." She
could immediately see the results of her experiments
with these multi-colored portraits-images shot,
then re-focused on and passed
back through the camera with varying exposure
times for the face or figure and for the graphic
element. Getting the blend just right was always
a delicate balancing act, technically difficult
to achieve." |
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