Alex Emmons

Artist Statement

I am influenced by my family’s migratory patterns. My mother was born in Panama, my father in Michigan; neither stayed in either location long enough to know it. This holds true for many places they lived thereafter. I grew up as a transplant in a rural, close-knit community in upstate New York during my parents’ 16-year house renovation project; subsequently, I never put down roots there. Since departing my first home, I have lived abroad and in various cities. The stories resulting from my families’ and my own experiences with moving has influenced my working process. Largely, the intersection of displacement and domestic space is the conceptual range that drives the direction of my creative research. My current projects embody the myriad of emotions encompassed by domestic space and being “away from home”.

Primarily, I am a lens-based artist, which allows me to explore photo-media for the variety of outcomes appropriate to my conceptual goals. I incorporate a variety of cameras to create photographs with a range of focus from blurry to sharp. By working intuitively inspired by memories and current events, I create a visual dialogue while photographing. My projects describe my memories as well as my “gut” response by the selections I make for my pictures. I apply a formal vision to my projects that consistently defines each working portfolio. Poststructurally, I rely on my viewers to identify what they recognize in my pictures and then, I hope, they will investigate further and relate to what is visually remaining from their own perspectives and knowledge. I believe my art work is realized, when an audience views it.

Currently, I am exploring four ongoing projects. Enclosed you will find examples from the following portfolios: Fieldtrips Home, Uncertain Weather, House & Garden, and The Farm. The first, Fieldtrips Home, is a seven-year project wherein I explore acquaintances domestic spaces and respond to the arrangement of their homes with a 4x5 view camera by focusing and abstracting the focal plane. This series is characterized by large, digital prints enclosed in a dark frame suggestive of looking into a window. Uncertain Weather, has developed from residing in between several mountain passes in Eastern Washington. I am producing a portfolio characterized by large unfocused night pictures shot during a poorly planned road trip. Like the early plant specimen photographs of Anna Atkins, House & Garden, is an Arizona-based project, for which I collect plant shadows from my Mother’s garden with cyantoype-coated paper. After two years of image-making, I have a print archive that is presenting new opportunities for a family-style portrait installation project for December 2010. Lastly, for The Farm, I visit an alternative farm a couple times a week, this is a year-long documentary project that began July 2009. I have given the project this time range so that I can capture all seasonal changes as well as the transitions present in the animals and surrounding landscape. I photograph the daily and important events with a digital camera that can shoot RAW files very rapidly, so I never miss anything that 245 chickens, 48 ducks, 18 turkeys, 9 geese, 20 guinea fowl, 7 cows, 1 bull, pigs seasonally, 3 cats, and 3 dogs might do on the 20-acre lot.