Indiana: The Lenscratch Addendum

Guest editing the Lenscratch States Project for Indiana was a difficult task as I wanted to include many more artists than were possible and some that did not fit the specifications. Instead, they will reside here as an addendum to what was not posted last week.

Rochelle Martin, A New Dress, 2016

Rochelle Martin, The Dresses My Grandmother Made, 2014

In her series, Doubts, rituals of the artist's past (revolving around religion) and the present (the photographic process and its deconstruction) are the main focus. The dress represents Rochelle's childhood, yet its constant reappearance shows the impossibility of shedding that history. Carefully taking things apart whether it is a camera, text, or reinterpreting an outline of a dress with rocks in the snow, creates a broader understanding of distant experiences that are constantly informing who she is today. More than anything, this series is a coming of age, an introspective examination of a faith no longer desired and the quest for art as its replacement.

I kept wishing I knew a photographer from Northern Indiana to add to the group and suddenly, one contacted me. The above two images are from Rita Koehler's series Rite of Ordinary: Interior Indiana. She states on her website that it is "a conceptual, photographic documentary that examines the domestic lives of same-gendered couples living in Northern Indiana.... The portraits of these couples reveal more than mere facial expressions. They reveal bodies, furniture, wall decorations, and all the details and appurtenances of one’s identity. Through the assemblage of things that constitute a home, the images lead viewers to work, to speculate, and to challenge the current paradigm of “normal” regarding gender, sexuality, love, home, family, and relationships."

Another avenue that I could have pursued that did not fit the Lenscratch specifications are artists who once called Indiana home but have since moved away and are doing well elsewhere. Nate Larson's Home State, Christine Shank's Our First Year Together and Camilla Oldenkamp's To Photograph were the three artists and their projects that immediately came to mind.

Nate Larson, Beautiful Loser, Montmorenci Cemetery, Tippecanoe County, Indiana, 2014

Nate Larson, Photo Opportunity at a Corn Maze, Lafayette, Indiana, 2015 
 

Christine Shank's "ongoing project, our first year together, consists of images that seem unrelated in content, location, and subject matter, but are bound together by their treatment and tone. There are images that hint at and reference one another while intentionally remaining enigmatic...."

"...These images construct the moments in between points of significance, the way much of life is experienced, in the middle of contemplation, conflict, and wonderment."

In To Photograph, Camilla Oldenkamp writes, "In much of the work I alter the traditional staging of photographs by destroying, preserving or altering their form. These modifications comment on the images' place and purpose in the past, present and future; the changes to the found imagery occasionally come full circle when the final output is a photograph itself. Encouraging a fluctuation between past and present, the work as a whole creates a new purpose for these found images once their original objective has expired."

Finally, here is an artist for whom I have greatest hope as she heads west for Nevada to start graduate school next month... Holly Lay from the series Through the Viewfinder.