STATEMENT

I have always been drawn to expressing myself through an artistic medium, whether it is with drawing, printmaking or photography. My images are not portraits, but narratives of my inner self. In searching for my life’s purpose, my work documents the exploration of my own identity.  By combining figures with backgrounds, costumes and props, I create works that are spiritual and allegorical. Seeking insight into who I will eventually become, I look for resolutions to unanswerable questions.

BIOGRAPHY

Polly Chandler grew up in Southern Illinois and graduated with an MFA in photography from Southern Illinois University.  She has exhibited her work nationally and her photographs have been published in magazines such as Photo District News, American Photo and Silvershotz Magazine.  Polly now lives in Austin, Texas and continues to make photographs as well as strives to challenge herself in her work.  About her body of work, she says "There are those occurrences that sit with us and settle into who we are.  Some are more forceful than others.  I am seeking to explore those identifiable instances that seem to slow time, and through my photographs, share the understanding of these moments."

Polly Chandler

STATEMENT

In my photography I’m trying to show to the audience that within the artistic interpretations of the world around and inside us everything is possible. In everyday life we can rarely see something extraordinary, but within art it’s always a mix of dreams, fantasies and reality. Seeing something surreal next to the ordinary, helps the viewer to use one’s imagination and build a story around my photographs. All the stories are usually different from what I had initially intended to show but I don’t mind that - we are all different and see the world around us differently, too.

For me, any form of art is not just a copy of reality (usually some kind of beautiful reality), but something that should bring sense and idea, statement, something that will show to the viewer how the artist felt at the moment of creating an artwork. “The image should reveal what you saw and felt at the time”- I’m 100% behind this statement. And no, I don’t think it is possible to “shock” the viewer in order to stimulate his or her senses more. Fortunately, the human kind does not consist of 6 billion of cloned species all with the same cultural level.. We are all so different and, therefore, everyone will react to the same photograph differently. Somebody will find it offensive, the other will enjoy looking at it and the third person might not see any sense in it at all.

Al Lapkovsky