Fruma Markowitz
My photography practice has always functioned as a visual diary. My work brings focus to things that other people overlook but are significant, troubling, or wonderful to me. Family life, my womanhood, and urban and natural environments are where I most often draw inspiration for making images.
Recently, I’ve stepped away from my traditional photography practice to experiment with Cyanotype, a process invented in 1842 in which non-toxic, light-sensitive emulsion turns an intoxicating Prussian blue when exposed to the sun. Utilizing paper and fabric substrates while occasionally adding stitching, these experimental “sketches” result in intriguing, ghostly monochromatic images of the same native weeds and wildflowers I had been photographing with my camera. I feel newly intimate with these materials, touching everything from start to finish and without the intervention of machines.
The plan for my Weir Farm residency is to push the Cyanotype process beyond its own traditional limits and visual vocabulary by adding color, texture and abstraction to various 2 and 3 dimensional media. Surrounded by the beauty and calm of Weir Farm, I welcome the much desired time and space to create nature-inspired work– challenging the limitations of my former representational approach to photography and broadening my artistic practice and purpose.
Header: Fruma Markowitz, Detail of Maple Leaf Milky Way
My photography practice has always functioned as a visual diary. My work brings focus to things that other people overlook but are significant, troubling, or wonderful to me. Family life, my womanhood, and urban and natural environments are where I most often draw inspiration for making images.
Recently, I’ve stepped away from my traditional photography practice to experiment with Cyanotype, a process invented in 1842 in which non-toxic, light-sensitive emulsion turns an intoxicating Prussian blue when exposed to the sun. Utilizing paper and fabric substrates while occasionally adding stitching, these experimental “sketches” result in intriguing, ghostly monochromatic images of the same native weeds and wildflowers I had been photographing with my camera. I feel newly intimate with these materials, touching everything from start to finish and without the intervention of machines.
The plan for my Weir Farm residency is to push the Cyanotype process beyond its own traditional limits and visual vocabulary by adding color, texture and abstraction to various 2 and 3 dimensional media. Surrounded by the beauty and calm of Weir Farm, I welcome the much desired time and space to create nature-inspired work– challenging the limitations of my former representational approach to photography and broadening my artistic practice and purpose.
Header: Fruma Markowitz, Detail of Maple Leaf Milky Way
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