Particle, Rupture, Synthesis.
Cameraless Photography by Anne Arden McDonald
October 1 – November 1, 2020
The Center for Photography at Woodstock is pleased to announce the solo exhibition Particle, Rupture, Synthesis. Cameraless Photography by Anne Arden McDonald. This hybrid exhibition will be presented as a gallery installation, as well as a virtual exhibition, enabling visitors regardless of their geographic location to explore these sensual abstractions created through chemical reactions on light sensitive material.
Like many artists, McDonald was directly impacted by the covid-19 pandemic. Her exhibition at Lycoming Art Gallery, Everything Changes Everything, was on view for only ten days before the national shutdown closed it to viewers. The work receives a fresh interpretation in CPW’s exhibition that begins with her earlier self-portraits. Using her performances for the camera as a starting point of inner exploration, the exhibition then shifts to her more recent cameraless photographs that reinterpret our understanding of materiality of the world around us. Most images are unique prints created by the artist using light or chemical exposure directly on the photo paper. The resulting images are subtle abstractions that emphasize creative expression, rather than process.
In all, McDonald’s works serve as an emotional anchor in uncertain times. Contemplative in nature, they invite us to look within and beyond, and to acknowledge shape without becoming trapped by it.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Anne Arden McDonald is a Brooklyn-based visual artist with deep ties to the Woodstock area, where she now lives part-time. From age 15 to 30 she made self portraits by building installations in abandoned interiors and performing privately for her camera in these spaces. She publishing a book of this work in 2004 (Autonomy and Alchemy Press: Installations and Self Portraits). For 20 years, she was a private dealer for thirteen Czech and Slovak photographers. She also has a large body of ethereal photographs shot with a Diana camera over several decades. More recently she has been using light and chemistry the way a painter or sculptor would to build images on photographic paper.
McDonald’s work has been exhibited widely: in the past 30 years, she has had 44 solo exhibitions in 10 countries (about 230 total shows in 14 countries) and has been published in over 215 places in 20 countries, including in Aperture, European Photography, and Eyemazing Magazine. Her work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Worchester Art Museum, the Houston MFA, the Denver at Museum, the Detroit Institute of Art, and the Bibliothque Nationale in Paris. She was a Lapine Fellow at the Millay Colony, was given a grant of studio space from the Sharpe Foundation, and was in residence at the Byrdcliffe colony from 2015-2017. She taught for six years at Parsons School of Design in New York, and has lectured about topics such as staged photography, self portraiture, Czech and Slovak photography, alternative photography, and her own work.
If you have darkroom photo paper, regardless of brand, size, or age, consider donating it to Anne Arden McDonald. Read McDonald’s suggestions on how to test and potentially salvage fogged photo paper.
CPW’s exhibitions are free and open to the public due to the continued support from the New York Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Art, the Warhol Foundation, Joy of Giving Something, the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation, our members and other supporters.