Please join us for a conversation with Santa Fe photographers Kathleen Bishop and Jennifer Schlesinger moderated by Katherine Ware.  These two artists will share not only the stories behind their images, but also the importance of alternative processes in the creation their work.

Bishop and Schlesinger are currently participating in Past is Present:  Alternative Processes in Contemporary Photography at David Richard Gallery.  The exhibition presents seven artists working with a variety of early methods, from lens-less cameras to wet-plate photography, exploring the importance of process to the resultant images.

About the Artists:

Kathleen Bishop

After studying photography at the San Francisco Art Institute, Kathleen Bishop received her BFA in Photography from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and her MFA from the National University of Ireland in Galway.  Bishop was Artist in Residence at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, 2007-2008 and since 2012 has been on the faculty of the Santa Fe Community College.

“My cyanotype images are studies of ordinary places that are representative of collective ideas about transcending and failing to transcend the quotidian existence of daily life. Apparently prosaic scenes contain cultural signifiers of transcendence from the temporal to the spiritual. Each image is a singular photograph that suggests varying degrees of success or failure to permeate this threshold. They are taken in the documentary tradition, with only minor adjustments in post-production, but their subject matter is suggestive of a borderland that exists between mundane and spiritual spaces. The empirical reality of a single recorded moment must necessarily fail to transcend the temporal, just as our outward existence in everyday life must occur in the mundane.  Both the camera and our eyes have an inherent limitation to see only the concrete objects before them. This impenetrable threshold is sometimes idyllic and at other times unsettling. These images are representations of ordinary miracles hidden in the landscape of everyday life.”

Jennifer Schlesinger

Jennifer Schlesinger graduated from the College of Santa Fe in 1998 with a B.A. in Photography and Journalism. She has exhibited widely at Southwest regional institutions such as the Marion Center for Photographic Arts (SFUAD), Santa Fe Art Institute and the New Mexico Museum of Art, as well as national institutions such as the Southeast Museum of Photography and the Chelsea Art Museum. Her work has been published online and in print with international publications such as Black and White Magazine (U.S and UK), the cover article for Diffusion Magazine Volume III, and Fotoritim in Turkey. Schlesinger is represented in many public collections, including the Southeast Museum of Photography, FL; The New Mexico Museum of Art, and the New Mexico History Museum / Palace of the Governors Photo Archives.

In addition to her artistic career she was also the Assistant Director of Santa Fe Art Institute from 2003-2005 and has been the Director of VERVE Gallery of Photography since 2005.

“For the past 6 years my artistic medium of choice had been the 19th Century Albumen process. However, I have also worked with a large format pinhole camera and I often print in the gelatin silver print process. My work mostly focuses on the landscape and how humans philosophically interact with the natural world around them.

“What attracts me most to photography is how it can capture a moment in time poetically, and I use this medium to interpret the world around me and how we as humans fit into the natural world. I am very drawn to photographic processes that support the subjects of my inquiries, and that is how I became drawn to gelatin silver and albumen in particular. The processes must, for me, complement the subject matter and there must be a reason beyond the medium itself for using it.”