MY CHRONOLOGY
September 2016
1945-1963 Born June 9, 1945. I grow up in upstate New York on a farm. Early on we grow fruit. Later, cows. I feel close to nature, observing the changing seasons and weather, the shifting light on the fields, and in the woods. I walk through our apple orchards in spring – the sweet smell of trees full of blossoms, the hum of bees, the warmth of the sun.
Our cobblestone farmhouse is surrounded by one hundred acres of apple orchards. Built in the early 1800’s, it is constructed with small palm-sized stones naturally rounded by the lapping waves on the shores of Lake Ontario. My sensibility as an artist is woven from a deep connection to this childhood on the farm. I sleep in a tree house in summer and build small shrines of sticks, mud and stones in the woods.
There’s a strong sense of immediacy and interconnectedness in running a farm.
You plant an empty, plowed field with alfalfa seeds. It grows into a lush expanse of green. You mow it and bale it. You feed it to the cows. The cows make milk
which you then drink and sell. All of this is dependent on many factors. If the weather is too wet, too dry, too hot or too cold, the hay doesn’t grow properly. If insects or diseases destroy the plants, there’s no food for the cows; therefore, no milk to drink and sell.
My mother always took pictures. In 1928 at age 10 she photographed her classmates playing baseball behind the small schoolhouse she attended in New Woodstock, NY. She also posed her little friends and took group portraits. Sometimes she included herself and had one of her pals snap the shutter. I am fascinated by these tiny prints she kept in an album – glimpses into her young life so many years ago. I never think to ask her how she happened to have a camera, what kind it was and how she got prints from it. Was she using the Kodak #1 camera so popular back then? Was she mailing the exposed film still in the camera to Kodak in Rochester and getting her reloaded camera and prints returned in the mail? Those were the days of, “You press the button, we do the rest.”
1962 Spend the summer in Columbia, South America. I learn to use my mother’s 35 mm Kodak to photograph the trip and attach a piece of tape to the back of the camera that reads: 1. Diaphragm 2. Shutter 3. Focus.
1963-1969 Attend and receive a B.S. from Cornell University. Afterward I teach children’s art classes part-time in Ithaca and do my own photography with a Pentax 35 mm camera. I love being around the creative and playful spirit of young children making art. I want my own artwork to have that same immediacy and direct connection. One day in the classroom I watch a young boy paint a large picture of a TV screen with a complex scene on it. Then he takes a big brush and makes two large knobs along the bottom – one for off and on, the other for channels. When the paint has dried he picks it up, tacks it to the wall, pulls up a chair, and turns it on. In the years to come, children’s artwork will have a big influence on my own. I begin feeling more and more serious about photography. I read Margaret Bourke White’s autobiography, Portrait of Myself.
1970 Meet my first husband, Stephen Ellis, a painter.
1972-1973 Buy a 35mm Leica and take a summer Zone System Workshop at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester. This method is based on the system for tonal control that Ansel Adams pioneered. I love being in this environment – surrounded by other people serious about photography. The following year I buy a 4 x 5 Linhof and repeat the Zone System Workshop. For many years I print using Ansel Adams approach. I continue studying and practicing and learn to master this rigorous method of previsualization and tight control of negative exposure and development and then print exposure and development. Adams would look at a scene and imagine the finished print he wanted to get. He envisioned all of the tones in the grey scale and where they would fall in the final printed. He then proceeded to map out a plan, step by step, for how he would translate that view into the final image. It involved exposing the negative in a specific way. Then developing and printing it according to the final image he had previsualized. He was unbelievably skilled at pushing and pulling grey tones around to get the sort of effect he was after. He produced highly controlled, pristine prints.
By now I have completed a portfolio of portraits, still lifes and landscapes, which I show to a photography professor at Cornell. I am pleased that he describes one of my prints as “elegant.” I apply to the Visual Studies Workshop M.F.A. Program and am accepted. This is exactly where I want to be.
1974 Start Graduate School. I study primarily with Nathan and Joan Lyons, Bea Nettles and Michael Bishop. These years are a time of great excitement and discovery. I experience all sorts of art I’ve never seen before. I love the biomorphic paintings of Gorky, Pollock, de Kooning, the early works of Rothko and Newman, and the paint charged vista of surface, light and color of Abstract Expressionism. I especially love the photographs of Walker Evans and Aaron Siskind. I photograph big, bold parts of machinery against a clear blue sky, inspired by Franz Klein's strong black and white paintings.
1976 Take a summer workshop with Ralph Gibson at Apeiron, in Millerton, NY.
I admire his striking, high contrast, and grainy prints.
1978 Receive an M.F.A. from the Visual Studies Workshop. (The degree actually comes from SUNY Buffalo.) My graduate show is my first one-person exhibition. It consists of machine parts photographed up against the sky printed in Ansel Adams pristine style on 16 x 20 inch Agfa paper.
1979 My parents sell our family farm. The economics of farming has changed so radically that small farms can no longer survive. It’s the beginning of the era of agribusiness. In my childhood, farms were controlled and operated by one family. Enormous barns, empty and decaying relics of time gone by, are now scattered throughout the countryside where I was raised.
I move to New York City. I marry my first husband.
As a result of moving to the largely man-made urban Manhattan, I feel disconnected from nature and sense that the natural world is becoming very fragile. I drive out of the city to photograph in the landscape. Soon afterward, I discover the magnificent work of Carleton Watkins. I photograph on the street and out the 3rd story window of our 29th Street loft. I begin a series of brush drawings heavily influenced by the Abstract Expressionists. I work hard to resolve the country/city duality I feel. I’m a country person surrounded by asphalt and cement switching back and forth between photographing in the country and the city. I can’t find a place to rest.
1980 Meet Aaron Siskind. I show him my photographs of NYC street images. He wants one and offers to trade.
1983 One-person exhibition of black and white landscapes at the Center for Arts, Wesleyan University, Middlebury, CT. Richard Whelan very positively reviews it in ArtNews. As a result, I begin exhibiting more regularly.
1984 Drive to Maine to meet Berenice Abbott. She’s 86. I spend an afternoon on the porch of her little house in the woods showing her my landscape photographs. She offers me a can of Budweiser. She is very encouraging. I learn about her Projection-Supersite Camera, a camera large enough for a person to stand under and put their head inside. It had lights all around the inside. She projected the image onto 16 x 20 inch sheets of film attached to the wall. She made portraits of people and also a fish with this invention.
That fall, I teach a view camera class at The New School.
1985-1986 My husband and I separate. Over the years I have become quite skilled at Ansel Adams’ Zone System technique. I turn our small loft under the Brooklyn Bridge into a darkroom with a tiny living area off to the side. I have three 45 x 55 inch heavy wooden trays on stands in what used to be my living room. I get a call from Robert Mapplethorpe who has just seen my large landscapes at Zabriskie Gallery. He asks me to print for him. To make a living, I begin working for him and for others as well, including Roni Horn, and Petah Coyne. I am officially a Master Printer specializing in oversize prints.
I become a Contributing Editor for BOMB Magazine. The New Museum of Contemporary art exhibits four of my large landscapes in Past, Present and Future, a group show.
1987 The International Center of Photography invites me to teach a landscape class.
1988 As time passes, I yearn for a more fluid approach and start experimenting with alternative methods. I begin making camera-less images. I have been photographing close-ups of leaves with my large format camera but am continually dissatisfied because I want to see the inside structure of them. I abandon the camera and negatives and start putting leaves into the enlarger and printing them directly. The results resemble X-rays. Since the images are greatly enlarged, the leaf structure -- veins and edges -- becomes very visible. I can take a two- inch long leaf and print it forty inches long, making every little detail perfectly clear.
I continue printing for other photographers to support myself. Although I’m an excellent printer and my clients are pleased and keep returning, I’m not good at the business part. I have so little money that when the gas tank in my old car springs a leak, the only repair I can afford is a bubble gum patch. Wanting the relief of a stable income, I take a one-year teaching position at SUNY Plattsburgh.
1989-1993 I move back and forth between the Adirondacks and Brooklyn and continue working for other photographers, printing my own leaves and exhibiting. I complete a collaborative sculpture with Maureen Connor and exhibit it at Sorkin Gallery, NYC. My work is included in several other exhibitions as well.
I meet my second husband, John Coplans.
1994-1997 Move back to NYC and begin living with John in his loft on the Bowery. We marry in 1997. I’m 52. He’s 77. We have a dynamic relationship. His stories, art world achievements and remarkable photographs endlessly fascinate me. By this time, John is doing well financially. Since he offers to cover rent and food expenses for me, my financial situation becomes much easier. He also suggests that we share his darkroom. It is on the third floor of 189 Bowery with a lot of heavy traffic rumbling by that jostles the building. I have to wait for the traffic to stop to make an exposure. But, this darkroom is not in the middle of my living room! I now have more time to print my own work and focus on my career.
My camera-less printing system works well for two-dimensional leaves, but wanting to print three-dimensional flowers in this same way, I convert an 1800’s, horizontal, wooden camera into an enlarger. I construct a space inside about a foot square – big enough to hold a large flower. I cover it with a black cloth somewhat like the shroud needed to focus a view camera in bright light. This apparatus rests on a box facing the wall. Photo paper is tacked to the wall.
I place a flower within the enlarger and project it onto the photographic paper. Denuded of color and enormously enlarged, this process gives a surprisingly intense quality of radiance to the black and white imagery. The enlargement throws the viewer’s sense of scale out of kilter. The combination of luminosity and size transforms the image into a burst of radiant light, mediated by a subtle range of grays surrounded by an intense darkness. The recognizable botanical images depicted within a photograph -- flowers, petals, stalks, leaves and delicate reproductive parts -- are transformed from the purely botanical, becoming metaphors of the life-giving quality of light itself to the living organisms of this earth.
The results I achieve are exactly what I have been longing for. I am finally on the “inside” and am reminded of the well-known quote from Jackson Pollock, “I work inside out, like nature.”
I continue photographing botanical specimens with my old wooden enlarger. I’m included in a group show, Heaven’s Embroidered Cloths - Camera-less Photography at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in the UK.
1998 Two-person exhibition of my 60 x 50 inch black and white flowers with Ellen Carey’s Polaroid "Pulls” at Ricco Maresca Gallery in NYC. This is my first exposure in NYC. It’s a big success. It immediately pushes my career to a higher level. The show gets a lot of attention resulting in more shows and good sales.
I begin putting light bulbs inside the enlarger. To me it’s obvious; light bulbs look like flowers, especially when one considers that both have filaments. I pose them upright, like heads. The results are spectacular. I call them the “flowers of the city.” With the use of several different contrast filters and different exposure times for both the 12 x 12 inch cold light and the light bulb I am able to get a large variety of different results all from the same bulb. I construct a grid of sixteen different 22 x 28 inch bulb prints -- four across, four down -- titling it “One Bulb.” I later exhibit this in “Power Plant”, a one-person exhibition of light bulbs and flowers at Gallery 339 in Philadelphia. During the opening I receive an email from John Szarkowski saying he received the poster of the grid I sent him, that he has it pinned to his wall and that he is learning things from it.
1999 Metta Galeria in Madrid and Zelda Cheatle Gallery in London exhibit my flowers. These are my first showings in Europe. The Madrid show sells out. There are also several group exhibitions this year.
2000 Begin putting glasses of water in the enlarger and am very excited with the results. Bubbles, dripping condensation, ice cubes – all illuminated by
light passing through the glasses from behind, not reflected off their surfaces. I feel a sense of being inside the glasses just as I did with the botanicals. My love for photographic materials -- darkroom and chemistry -- continues to grow and develop. I become more and more sensitive to the beauty of photography’s unique delicate grey tones.
John’s health begins to fail. Although we spend a great deal of time in doctor’s offices, we both continue working and enjoying our life together. I pretend to be his doctor giving him ridiculous medical treatments using kitchen utensils. He falls off his chair in laughter. Our sense of humor saves us.
2001 20 x 24 Polaroid Studio. Wanting to explore color, I buy some 4 x 5 color Polaroid film and color filters. I pose a light bulb in front of a 12 x 12 inch cold light and do some experiments. The results are remarkable. By making several different exposures of both the light bulb and the cold light, along with different combinations of filters, I’m able to achieve an infinite array of stunning color nuances. I exhibit these at Ricco Maresca Gallery. Art in America gives a very favorable review. Sales are excellent.
2003 John dies in August. In October I discover that one entire exterior wall of our Bowery loft building is unstable. Its bricks are dangerously bowing outward. I spend the next few months dealing with this and also planning a grand memorial for John at The Cooper Union. I become a Trustee for The John Coplans Trust.
2005 Begin abstractions. I score the paper’s top emulsion layer into a grid pattern with a mat knife and pour developer over the surface. This produces some intriguing results. Where the liquid developer hits a scored line its smooth flow is interrupted leaving little puddling shapes. It’s refreshing to be working abstractly – nothing at all recognizable in these prints. They’re entirely made in the darkroom with light and chemistry. Different parts of my mind are activated when there is no recognizable subject to pin it down. I contemplate the difference between representation and abstraction.
I continue with the black and white abstractions and also with water glasses and light bulbs, both in b/w and color.
2007-2008 Decide to move out of the city and find a beautiful loft in Beacon. For the first time in my life, I’m able to build a heavenly darkroom exactly the way I want it. No rumbling subway underneath. No heavy trucks passing by. No more waiting for the building to stop shaking to make an exposure.
I have a one-person exhibition of leaf prints at The Harvard Museum of Natural History. The show is up for nine months and receives a very strong review in the Boston Globe. It runs concurrently with Harvard’s Blaschka Studio sea creatures. These are otherworldly lifelike models produced in the 1800’s of marine animals made of meticulously shaped glass and wire. On another floor,
there’s an exhibit of the Blaschka glass flowers.
2009-2013 Now that I am thoroughly settled in my artist live/work loft my production and sales become more and more steady. I have several dealers and am able to make a fairly regular income, which covers my monthly expenses. My photographs have staying power. Images that I made twenty years ago are still in demand. I’m able to hire an assistant to help in the darkroom and another to help with studio administration. I’m in a good position.
2014-2016 Looking back over the years I’m puzzled by the sensation that all of my work is about the same thing – street photos, landscapes, leaves, flowers, light bulbs, water glasses and abstractions – they all feel the same. How can a light bulb feel like a street photograph? But it does. None of my series ever feels finished. I could re-enter any of them, move them to different places and learn new things.
I delve into making new abstractions and into pushing the boundaries of my printing techniques. I feel at the cusp of pulling together and integrating investigations from past years in these new “photographic drawings.”