Nancy Edelstein

As light is never still, so, too, are light’s shadows. Light and shadow can only be seen in tandem. They move together, interrupted, redirected and revealed through the obstacles in light’s path.

It is then that light and shadow come into focus, bringing shape to formlessness, dimension to darkness, and abstraction to nature.

These images are a tribute to the simple moments of light that I have witnessed and recorded.

They are an attempt to hold onto the gift of sight and wonder evoked by crazy waves of particles and energy traveling from so far away, casting shadows inside our homes, and bringing light into our lives.

After opening a box given to me by my mother, I realized that the dishes inside held stories that were both personal and universal. These Danish porcelain plates, bowls and serving pieces, twenty years earlier, had been the backdrop for my grandmother’s beautiful table settings every Friday night for the first 18 years of my life. Their translucent texture and hand painted waves and sky, seagulls and sea creatures, had gone unnoticed by me all those years. I was now inspired to capture close ups of these exquisite details which I then modified in a variety of ways and printed on vellum pages. Many of these abstractions were sandwiched together and reshot through a light box, creating unique, softly layered compositions.

As the project developed, forgotten memories of family moments and traditions surfaced, and it became clear that these dishes held the imprint of my family’s history. This work has evolved into both a series of fine art images and an installation, as well as an artist’s book of the same name.

After participating in a week-long workshop with Keith Carter, I was inspired to revisit the drama and romance of working with film and the medium-format camera. I was excited to take it outside and address the challenge of making beauty out of the litter I regularly found on my walks through the woods. With recycled scraps of discarded plastic, I draped and embellished the growth in the forest and watched it dance with the wind, the light, and the trees. Making and printing these images filled me with emotion while luring me into a transformed view of nature.

This work was the beginning of my ongoing interest in the visual language of translucency, transparency, and the layering effects of concealment and revelation, which never stops enticing me.

Oaxacan Portraits

When I entered a Mary Ellen Mark Portrait Workshop, I was a photographer who had never considered making portraits of people as my subject. After a few weeks in Oaxaca, I emerged as an aspiring, environmental portrait photographer.

I will always remember her advice for dealing with the language barrier: she gave us each a piece of paper that we were to hold up to those we were photographing which said ‘Don’t Smile.’ Of course written in Spanish.

Thank you, Mary Ellen Mark

This project was inspired by a class at the Photocenter NW called Time, Space and the Image, which resulted in a group exhibition at the Side Show Gallery in Seattle. I was very interested in incorporating the photography pieces I would make into an installation. My goal was to create a direct experience of small spaces and to address my own claustrophobia. This resulted in four large (4’x4’) color images of the inside walls and doors of various elevators, professionally printed and mounted on 1” thick foamcore panels.

I designed a simple 4’ x 4’ structure fabricated with steel legs and frame, wrapped on the outside in plywood. Inside, these four photographs were installed, one on each side, with a ceiling grid of glaring florescent light, and a low annoying buzz from a hidden soundtrack source.

Visitors would duck under the framework to enter this unknown space with unknown others. Conversation was brisk. Space was tight. My work was done.

These four panels are all that remain of this work. They are in great shape and looking for a good home….

I had the good fortune to gain access into the secured city steam plant in Seattle. I was free to wander well into the night, awed by the scale and power of the functioning machinery and it's inherent beauty. Even the closeups vibrated with the history of an antique industry still operating in this more than 100 year old building.

This summer I returned to school for an MFA degree at MICA-Maryland Institute College of Art. Designed as an interdisciplinary, low-residency program, it requires students to spend six intense weeks studying and making work in Baltimore for four summers, returning home in-between to do the same. I was hoping to branch out from my formal photographic concerns and get my work off the wall, outside the frame and into three-dimensional space. I experimented during the summer in the studio, following my mentor’s suggestion to distinguish the difference between “illustration” and “demonstration” of the ideas in my work. The freedom I felt in approaching art-making in such a new way led me back to my interest in light, shadow and space. I also became intrigued with the idea of rediscovering the familiar in unfamiliar ways. My final project was an installation of pins in all the existing holes in my studio walls. Viewers were invited into the darkened pin-lit room, slowly to discover the unexpected glistening shadows surrounding them. These are ideas that I continue to explore now that I have returned home.

To view a narrated slide show of this project, click here.

Little Cloud over Texas

I was charmed by a cloud driving through West Texas at the end of a storm. It seemed to hide and reappear, playing with me as I drove along the two-lane road. The images shown here are part of a series that resulted. I rediscovered them recently with a deeper understanding for them now than I had at the time they were made. Lately, I’ve been researching the New Topographics movement in photography and am noticing the man-made landscape everywhere. I have a passion for finding the odd and unexpected in the ordinary. These images, in their quiet way, certainly fit the bill.

I’m always a sucker for a square format, light bouncing around interior spaces and the memories contained within. This project had it all. It came to me while visiting my mother in Florida. I had arrived loaded with photo equipment from another adventure and was planning on retiring and just relaxing with her. However, on the last day of my visit, I glanced into her bedroom and took in, as if for the first time, the whole scene I was so used to: white light streaming in from the skylight slashing patterns across the floor, neat rows of glass shelves with teddy bears dressed in my mother's own hand-knitted outfits, and a full size standing doll with a huge mop of hair that reminded us all of my neice, leaning over the foot of the bed as if crying in despair! How could I resist! Out came the camera and tripod, and so my search began for more of these strange isolated rooms where the light is alive and the sense of memory is subtly palpable.

These images capture the spectral effect of white light when projected through red, green and blue filters from an LED projector. They are photographed at a lens speed that freezes instants of light as it passes through glass objects. My interest is in gaining a better understanding of the varying properties and effects of artificial light and technology. I am currently focused on exploring the range and limits of LED light. All of this is in service of my underlying goal: to create simple spectacles for the viewer to recognize something new in the familiar, and come away with heightened perception.