Online Group Exhibition - "Sculptural Photography” February 2020
"Up the Hill" by Sara Fahling | Mamiya RB67 ProS + Kodak Portra 400, Printed on Broadcloth and Silk Organza, Stiched with Embroidery Thread, 32x40”
Analog Forever Magazine is pleased to showcase 24 images in this month’s online exhibition entitled "Sculptural Photography". Curated by artist and Analog Forever Magazine Social Media and Community Manager, Lynn Bierbaum, these photographs explore the ways in which artists blend the two dimensional nature of photography with the three-dimensional world of sculpture into a single unique piece of art. These pieces are not only admired from afar but can also be able to be picked up, touched, and felt, adding a whole element to the photographs themselves.
Lynn Bierbaum writes:
lt’s always fascinating to me to see how people bring photography, which is so commonly seen as a 2-dimensional art form, into a new light. As I began working in glass blowing there was an immediate connection between glass and historic techniques within photography. Photographers had been creating daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and tintypes which all had a sculptural feel to them. With this exhibition, I wanted to see how modern-day photographers were using the materials at their disposal to create new and exciting pieces of sculptural art.
While looking at the submissions I was looking for photographs that created balance between the 2 and 3-dimensional worlds. It was important that one element didn’t outshine the other, but rather worked together in harmony to create a striking and groundbreaking piece of art that brought photography into a sculptural realm.
All the images I chose pushed the boundaries of what a photograph can be. Some focused on using objects as a canvas for their images, others transforming the image through collage, stitching or an additive process to create their pieces. In addition to those, some artists chose to add an interactive element to their images that brought the viewer into the photograph’s intimate space. All these sculptural techniques stand out as groundbreaking photographic work.
I chose Sarah Fahling’s piece as my winner for the Sculptural Photography exhibition. As I was looking at her photograph, the soft light feel of the fabric immediately drew me in and the specific placement of stitching throughout the image would guide my eye to subtitle elements within the photograph. I found myself continually coming back to her piece to see what else I would find.
-Lynn Bierbaum
Gallery
About the Curator
Lynn Bierbaum is a Minneapolis based Alternative Photographer and Glass artist. She is an avid traveler who is always looking for her next place to photograph. She started working in film back in 2010 and alternative photography in 2015, starting with Platinum palladium and then moving into other processes such as albumen, salt, van dyke brown, and wet plate collodion.
Lynn is also a glassblower who has traveled across Europe and the United States assisting, and working with well-known glass artists. Most recently working for the Corning Museum of Glass, in upstate NY.
Her current fine art work is printing wet plate collodion on her blown glass forms. Lynn’s work strives to find a balance between two and three-dimensional planes. She blows the glass vessels to create an extension beyond the photograph that is just as important as the image itself.
She has been recognized in Analog Forever Magazine as an interviewed artist in the 1st issue, Runner-up in Modern Collodion’s 2019 Wet Plate Competition, and featured in multiple issues of The Hand magazine.