Lindsey Beal is a photo-based artist in Providence, Rhode Island where she teaches at Rhode Island College. She has an M.F.A. in Photography from the University of Iowa and a Certificate in Book Arts at the University of Iowa’s Center for the Book. She is represented by Boston's Panopticon Gallery.
Her work combines historical & contemporary women’s lives and feminism with historical photographic processes. She is interested in the photograph as object and often includes sculpture, papermaking and artist books into her work.
Her work has been shown at national museums, galleries and universities and is included in various public & private collections. She recently earned an Honorable Mention for Center Forward 2014 at the Center for Fine Art Photography. She was a Finalist at the 87th Annual International Print Competition at The Print Center and received an Honorable Mention for emerging American photographers by the Magenta Foundation. Her work can be found at lindseybeal.net.
A bacterial sexually transmitted infection is a living, growing, mutating thing that exists within the human body. The act of transmission is often sexy; yet what is transmitted is menacing. The bacterial STIs before you (BV, Chlamydia, Trichomonas, Gonorrhea and Syphilis) can be silent for women and have little to no symptoms for men: they reveal themselves mainly through medical tests. Without testing, the cycle continues: without noticeable symptoms, no treatments are received; without treatments, the infections are unknowingly passed to others. Though mostly silent, all of these infections have potentially catastrophic side effects like pelvic inflammatory disease, joint disease, meningitis, sterility and fatal pregnancies. Although we should have eradicated these long ago, bacterial STIs continue to exist. Frighteningly, they are beginning to mutate and become drug resistant; gonorrhea specifically has outgrown our current treatments. Due to the recession, many non-profit clinics in which these STIs could be identified and treated have closed. What once seemed like a scary yet treatable nuisance or temporary problem is becoming a major public-health concern.
Transmission’s images are created by using open-source imagery from the Center for Disease Control. The images were altered, and then converted into digital negatives, which were used to print the cyanotypes. The prints are embedded in resin within Petri dishes. Each STI is represented in various images and whose information and prevention can be read about in the accompanying artist book.
Majority of STDs can be cured. But one has to remember that they can be the reason for hassles and disabilities in life of people with STDs. Diseases like derek jeter herpes, gonorrhea and chlamydia can cause problems that can make life miserable.
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