COLLAGE ON VIEW
Camera & Collage
at Kolaj Institute Gallery in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
29 November 2024-5 January 2025
part of PhotoNOLA
Opening Reception during Second Saturday: 14 December 2024
The mediums of collage and photography are bound together in an ongoing dialogue. The photographer makes pictures of the world. The collagist remixes those pictures to tell a story about the world we live in. What happens when the photographer begins collaging their own work? What happens when the collage artist picks up the camera?
“Camera & Collage” brings together artists from Australia, Kuwait, Mexico, Canada, and the United States each of whom have developed a practice that sits at the intersection of collage and photography. The artwork demonstrates a variety of techniques and approaches. The artists are engaged in collage as process; making art with family archives and found materials; exploring alternative processes; and challenging how we think about images in a world flooded with them. In doing this, the artists invite viewers to consider questions of identity and gender; family and memory; the materiality of photography; and history and artist process.
9″x12″; collage on canvas with original photography, portraits by Nicci Radhe; 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
The cyanotypes of Robert A. Schaefer, Jr. (New Orleans, Louisiana, USA) demonstrate how the medium is an example of collage process. The “layering of the images and their colors draw viewers into another dimension of space and time with the impact of inner reflection.” Demonstrating how collage can transcend time, Claire Hansen (Brooklyn, New York, USA) makes tintypes using a wet plate collodion process that incorporates images taken from inside contemporary video games. Inspired by the minimalism of John Stezaker’s collage, Jan Kather (Elmira Heights, New York, USA) photographs a photograph of the Lackawanna Trail at the point the photograph was taken. Using an inkjet gel transfer process, Jennifer Mead (Tucson, Arizona, USA) brings photographs from her family’s archive and her contemporary photography into conversation about her religious upbringing.
Lance Rothstein (Clearwater, Florida, USA) demonstrates collage’s ability to disrupt and contemplate a photograph by presenting an image of a Marigny street corner that was made of “five different silver gelatin darkroom prints of the exact same image, using various types of paper with different weights, surfaces, and toners.” Mónica McCumber Avilés (Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico) prints her photographs on transparent tracing paper and collages them to make “the image more ethereal and belonging to the memories and to the unconsciousness.”
Maryam Hosseinnia (Kuwait City, Kuwait) collages her photographs “to navigate the duality of my identity as an American-Iranian” and introduce “depth and ambiguity in my visual compositions.” Brandon Thomas Brown (Brooklyn, New York, USA) collages historical materials into his own photographs as a way to interrogate contemporary Blackness. Catharine Bramkamp (Nevada City, California, USA) presents images of decimated land and deleted cultures by collaging her own photographs of historic sites. Wanting us to consider rocks as an archive, Naomi White (Los Angeles, California, USA) disrupts her photographs with collage. She wrote, “Like a camera, rocks record and bear witness to our collective past. In the gasses they trap, every environmental change is stored forever, cataloging the unending story of the destruction of our planet and its inhabitants by a dominant class. They hold an undeniable truth in a world of shifting disinformation.”
The abstract series, “The Language of Posing” by Amanda Gardner (Dayboro, Queensland, Australia), interprets the five classic poses as a comment on “how conformity requires us to re-package ourselves into acceptability.” Dafna Steinberg (Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, USA) “returned to my photographic archives, utilizing numerous photographs I have made over the years (that never ended up as parts of projects or series) as material for collages.” The artist wrote, “I am finding a thread of meaning that strings them together, like laundry on a washing line and realizing that everything connects through the trajectory of my artistic life and practice.” Spencer Steiner (Brooklyn, New York , USA) “excavates the concept of memory and nostalgia” using miniature snapshots from the 1950s-60s found at the Brimfield Flea Market in Massachusetts. They wrote, “This tension between past and present, paired with the imagery of trash and detritus, evokes the essence of the material residue from celebrations and moments of spectacle.”
29″x41″; inkjet print on vellum, paper clips; 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
Alejandra Spruill (Orange, Massachusetts, USA) disturbs her photographs with fragments of cyanotype “to evoke a sense of puzzle-solving, a visual metaphor for how disparate elements can coalesce into a unified whole work.” Guylaine Séguin (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) uses collage to “explicitly unravel the constructed nature of image and highlight the deception and fabrication of images inhabiting our world.” Ric Kasini Kadour (New Orleans, Louisiana, USA & Montreal, Quebec, Canada) presents a work from his “Broken Windows” series. The artist scans, enlarges, and then rephotographs an analog collage as a way to reflect on how visual data makes its way through culture and the distortions that take place as we view images through multiple media and formats.
The Polaroids of influential printmaker Jim Steg (1922-2001) (New Orleans, Louisiana, USA) were created in the late ‘80s and ‘90s. Curator and photographer Jennifer Shaw wrote, “He took instant pictures with an SX-70, often from the television screen, then deftly altered them. The subjects include faces, figures, and ephemera, and the images frequently reference art history. As objects, they’re highly manipulated, both by surface pressure to affect the internal chemical development, and external processes including cutting, drawing, painting, and collage. The collection exudes a raw, punkish energy, while also expanding on themes that Steg explored throughout his career.”
The exhibition, “Camera & Collage”, takes place at Kolaj Institute Gallery from 29 November 2024 to 25 January 2025 as part of PhotoNOLA 2024, an annual celebration of photography in New Orleans, produced by the New Orleans Photo Alliance in partnership with museums, galleries, and alternative venues citywide. The exhibition is the third in a series in which Kolaj Institute is exploring the intersection of Photography & Collage.
The Gallery is located at 2374 Saint Claude Avenue, Suite 230, at the corner with St. Roch Avenue above the Peach Cobbler Factory. The Gallery is open Thursday-Saturday, Noon-6PM or by appointment and until 9PM on Second Saturday.
ABOUT THE NEW ORLEANS PHOTO ALLIANCE & PHOTONOLA
The mission of the New Orleans Photo Alliance (NOPA) is to encourage the understanding and appreciation of photography through exhibitions, opportunities, and educational programs. They operate a darkroom, gallery and studio/event space. NOPA produces PhotoNOLA, the Festival of Photography in New Orleans, in partnership with museums, galleries, and venues citywide. Showcasing work by photographers near and far, the festival includes exhibitions, workshops, lectures, a portfolio review, and more. Learn more at www.neworleansphotoalliance.org and www.photonola.org.
ABOUT KOLAJ INSTITUTE’S PHOTOGRAPHY & COLLAGE PROJECT
The mediums of collage and photography are bound together in an ongoing dialogue. The photographer makes pictures of the world. The collagist remixes those pictures to tell a story about the world we live in. In partnership with the New Orleans Photo Alliance, Kolaj Institute’s Photography & Collage Project explores the intersection of these two mediums. We ask, “What happens when a collagist picks up the camera? What happens when a photographer collages their pictures?” Artists at an in-person residency in May 2024 created artwork that was included in the “Where Photography Meets Collage” exhibition at the New Orleans Photo Alliance Gallery, 9 June-20 August 2024. In August 2024, Kolaj Institute Gallery presented the exhibition, “Advanced Wound Healing Techniques: Collage by Robbie Morgan” (16 August to 6 October 2024); a collection of collage made with personal photographs that were destroyed in a series of fires that took place when the artist was 24 years old. In July 2024, Kolaj Institute hosted a virtual residency after which artists were invited to submit artworks that were considered for “Camera & Collage”, an exhibition at Kolaj Institute Gallery, 29 November 2024-5 January 2025, as part of PhotoNOLA 2024, an annual celebration of photography in New Orleans, produced by the New Orleans Photo Alliance in partnership with museums, galleries, and alternative venues citywide. The project is led by Dafna Steinberg and Lance Rothstein with curatorial support from Ric Kasini Kadour.
ABOUT KOLAJ INSTITUTE
The mission of Kolaj Institute is to support artists, curators, and writers who seek to study, document, and disseminate ideas that deepen our understanding of collage as a medium, a genre, a community, and a 21st century movement. We operate a number of initiatives meant to bring together community, investigate critical issues, and raise collage’s standing in the art world. Kolaj Institute’s Gallery in New Orleans presents exhibitions and connects Kolaj Institute and the artists we work with to the vibrant St. Claude Arts District. We produce 8-10 exhibitions a year and participate in Second Saturday, the neighborhood’s monthly art walk, putting the collage art, books and exhibitions in front of New Orleanians and visitors.