|
OUR INTERVIEW WITH NATALIE YOUNG
ARTIST STATEMENT
My photographs
frequently explore the connection of the past to the present, and
the relationship of people to their environment. Personal identity
and cultural history are often attached to a sense of place, and
this can have a strong influence over the texture and stories of our
life. I am very interested in the experience of family and cultural
history ... the need for a story that ties us to a larger meaning,
and the extent to which we either inherit larger stories or attempt
to create newer ones.
‘The Farm’ series was photographed in Kansas over the past decade,
on the farm of my husband's grandparents. The land has been in the
family for many generations and much of his family's roots,
identity, and stories are tied to this particular plot of earth.
This project is about place and history, about memory and story.
It's about the things that tie us together, and the things that
bring us back.
The images are presented as traditional silver gelatin prints,
printed rather small, in dark tones, and the final prints are
tea-stained to mute the palette further. The resulting effect
creates a thin veil between the viewer and the print, so the
interaction with the subject matter is less immediate and is
filtered through a sense of history and memory.
 |
OUR INTERVIEW WITH SUZANNE ROCHETTE
ARTIST STATEMENT
Magdalene’s
Islands, poetic fragments from within.
My
photographic projects are reflective of my interests and feelings: a
place’s ambiance, the poetry of a gesture or site, the eclectic or
peaceful atmosphere that was sensed at a certain time, a
surrealistic background, symmetry or confusion of landscapes.
This photographic project started in 1996 in a mostly traditional
photographic way, and took a more personal and aesthetic regard in
2005, when I began working with a Polaroid pinhole toy camera. The
aspect of uncertainty inherent with pinhole photography, combined
with Polaroid unpredictability in terms of color and integrity of
the emulsion, adds up to create a fragile balance between basic
technology and intuition. No shutter, no viewfinder, no meter, I
find this empirical method of exposure very interesting and a lead
to multiple and different results. Using this medium allows me to
apprehend our surrounding reality in a more visceral and organic
way.
The blue color, resulting of the film long exposure, contributes to
the overall seascape surrounding. Without artifice, this primarily
intuitive medium transcends reality to reflect the pure emotions
arising from these out of time landscapes, these artifacts carrying
history and, most important, stories; stories of ocean, love,
passion, families, cultures, traditions, stories of a past that
reaches us beyond time. These stories are alive or gone, sad or
joyful, memories that we create in relation to our own path.
Baptized "Menagoesenog (islands swept by the winds)" by the «Micmac»
Indians, Magdalene’s Islands deserve their name well. Located in
the heart of the St. Lawrence’s gulf (Canada), the archipelago
counts a dozen islands, six of them being connected by narrow sand
dunes. Isolated and swept continuously by the winds, the landscapes
presents with extraordinary beauty. The sea, omnipresent, is
reflected in all Madelinots life aspects. Details of that
surrounding lay in the presence of boats, on water or inland, some
of them abandoned, reflecting the changes in the fisherman’s way of
living. |