Michelle Bablitz

Michelle Bablitz is an artist working predominately in the fields of photography and writing. Bablitz received her MFA degree in Imaging Arts & Sciences from Rochester Institute of Technology, and she has exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions across the United States. Her photographic work largely encompasses the motifs of memory, loss and self-actualization. Bablitz resides in Brooklyn, New York, where she actively writes, photographs, and runs the artist agency SAINT LUCY Represents.

Artist Statement: I could go with you.

The series I could go with you. is the fragmented narrative of an internal struggle following a traumatic event. The series’ narrator is unable to come to terms with memories that are overwhelmingly painful. While attempting to navigate daily life and regain a sense of normalcy, she is afflicted with repressions from the past emerging in her present-day world. The images obscure the possibilities of the narrator’s future with a permanent state of loss in her past, collapsing the confines of time and space. Her fragile retrospective sentiments, as well as the fractured chronology, are examined through glass etchings.

I could go with you. is an investigation into how text and image work together to communicate a story, while challenging the credibility of memory. In many ways a photograph is eternally fictional and unattainable; one can never look upon an image and revisit the same scene or moment that was tangible only for a fraction of a second to the image-maker. A photograph transports its viewer to a scene that can be infinitely reinterpreted, but never truly revisited. However, once text is written, or etched onto glass as it is in this series, it has factual and constant points of entry that conjure unique images and reference points to each reader/viewer. Text and image communicate a disjointed narrative that mirrors how memory and trauma function in the human psyche when combined in this series.

Christine Shank

Christine Shank is an artist working predominantly in photography. She has exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States since 1998 and her artwork is in the Harry Ransom Center and the William Benton Museum of Art as well as several private collections. Shank has been an artist-in-residence at the MacDowell Colony, Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts and the SIM Residency in Reykjavik Iceland. A selection of her “Interiors” series was published in 2008 through Booksmart Studios in a limited edition monograph titled She Quietly Considers. Shank has received funding through The Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, New York Foundation for the Art’s Strategic Opportunities Stipend and The Midwest Center for Photography.

Christine Shank has a BFA in photography from Miami University of Ohio and a MFA from Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas. She currently lives in Rochester, New York where she is an Assistant Professor and the Director of the MFA program in Imaging Arts at Rochester Institute of Technology.

Ashley Kauschinger: Your series, our first year together, has a great variety of imagery. What is your thought process behind this decision and how do you still create a cohesive series? 

Christine Shank: Yes there are a variety of different types of images within the series. My ongoing project, our first year together, consists of images that seem unrelated but are bound together by their treatment and tone. There are images that hint at and reference one another while intentionally remaining enigmatic. There are images containing a trace of reference to other images within the series, like an icicle appears in one image and just the watermark from the icicle is in another one; the outline of scissors sun bleached into butcher paper that makes up a different image, nail holes in a wallpaper, blood stained tissues, all these images reference one another and contain a very ordinary type of everyday violence. I am interested in the way that images work together and against one another and how they suggest a very benign sort of disturbance. The sequencing pushes at the differences between the singular images to avoid the implication of any one specific narrative while the wide variety hopefully works to move the viewer through the whole body of work.

Within this series I have been really interested in pushing at what is thought of as a series of photographs. There are images that are highly constructed, to photographs where the only intervention is that I made a picture. Typically the subject matter, the locations, materials, photographic techniques, or methodology will be what binds together a series but with these images what holds them in relationship to on another is the quiet and often very subtle connection between them. This is what creates the tone I believe holds the images in conversation with one another. 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.

AK: What role does narrative play in your work?

CS: The way I think about and engage narrative in my artwork has greatly changed over the years. When I was working on the Interiors Series (2004-2009) I was very interested in constructing a story to be contained within the frame of one image. That story was told through the scenes I built and the image’s title.

In my current body of work I am most interested in creating a sequences of images that a narrative cannot be easily drawn out of, so it’s the opposite of how I was once working. With this work I am most excited by the restraint needed to make suggestions without pointing to a direct narrative structure or creating a narrative arc. I am not interested in creating a singular narrative or even an explicit narrative. I hope for a feeling to emerge and a relationship between the images to be recognized and that the person viewing the work finds something in the combinations they can relate to. I know this is a tall order considering the speed at which most people consume images these days, especially online with Tumblrs, for instance, or in overwhelming hyper experiences like art fairs.

The title of the series, our first year together, is intentionally vague and creates more questions than answers. In fact I have been developing the series over many years—from 2009 – 2014. But I think the title matches the softness and suggestive moments within the photograph while creating a time period in which to consider the images. A few years ago I had a review with curator Roy Fulkerson and he said, “don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there,” which is a quote from Miles Davis and it fits how I am thinking about what emerges from our first year together.

AK: What influence does literature and poetry bring to your photographic work?

CS: I feel connections between photography and literature. What I draw the most inspiration from is what I read and what I experience in my day-to-day life. I recently read Rage of Poseidon by Anders Nilsen, Mumbai, New York, Scranton by Tamara Shopsin, Path by Rebecca Solnit & Elin Hansdottir and Can’t and Won’t: Stories by Lydia Davis. For different, and some overlapping, reasons these books are really inspirational to me right now. Jeffery McDaniel is my favorite poet and has been for a number of years. I always go back to his poems and always feel something stir in me when I read them. Diane Ackerman, Annie Dillard, Malcolm Gladwell are also writers that I am inspired by and always enjoy reading. The way they can create a story about the fragility of being human while also examining nature, society, economy, and exploring their own curiosity through stories is wondrous to me.

My husband has recently been reading books on the origins of the essay and the conversations we’ve had as a result have caused me to think about sequencing images in a very different way and inspiring me to sketch new images to create in the studio.

AK: Take us through what a day of creating art is like for you. What environment do you create for yourself?

CS: I really prefer being alone when I’m working. I figured out pretty early on that socializing and making art don’t fit together for me; even when I’m just scanning negatives I prefer isolation. Over the years I have had really wonderful studio assistants but I have never been able to really make my work with anyone else around. I like it to be quiet, no phone, no internet, sometimes no music. My studio is a very private place where I can play, make messes, make mistakes, consider things and walk away from something leaving it right where it is knowing that it will be there when I return. I have a phrase taped to the back of my studio door – expect nothing– which is what I strive for when working. Holding that in mind keeps me open to surprises. I am a very organized person when I teach and I try to be tidy in my home and office space at work, but in the studio I am none of those things. In the last decade I have had 5 different studio spaces and the ones that worked best for me were those where I left home to go to the studio. Even just a mile away is enough for me to separate myself from the other responsibilities of my life and to enter the working space of the studio. In recent years I have started to do residencies and in those months or weeks away I am the incredible productive. There is something really uncomfortable and helpful to me in the window of time where everything is new, uneasy and unsettling, I feel a heightened sense of awareness and am very sensitive and productive in that time.

AK: You graduated with an MFA from Texas Woman's University 10 years ago. What advice do you have for photographers navigating the world after graduate school?

CS: I think post-graduate school you have to really be honest with yourself about what your priorities are and what is most important to you. I believe you have to figure out what you enjoy doing and how you want to spend your time. During graduate school, time is really devoted to your growth and experimentation as an artist and students have to work within the requirements of a specific program. Other than the program’s guidelines it’s really about you and your work. When you are done with school you have to get really clear with yourself about what you want and what you are willing to do to have what you want in your life because no one is holding you accountable for anything anymore.

I chose the path of teaching as a way to make a living and support my art. I’ve been really fortunate and I started teaching full-time directly after grad school. This has worked out well for me and I have been fortunate to work in supportive universities with colleagues who have helped me grow as an educator and artist. I have friends who have chosen other avenues and I talk to my students about the variety of jobs and careers that may be a good fit for their lives post grad school. I think it’s important to remember no path is easy and no choice is wrong, you have to figure out what works for you.

Also I think the quote in my studio I mentioned earlier is good advice in it’s many interpretations: expect nothing.

Colleen Mann

Colleen Mann is a fine art photographer originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her work deals with the internal experience, femininity, and the uncanny. These themes address her experience of suffering and recovering from anorexia nervosa. Mann is currently pursuing her BFA in Professional Fine Art Photographic Illustration and a minor in Imaging Systems at Rochester Institute of Technology. She currently resides in Rochester and Philadelphia.

Project Statement

A difficult place to be in recovery from an eating disorder is the weight restoration stage and trying to cope with the every day while staying healthy. This is a side that most people don’t see, or that people forget about. The assumption is that once you are healthy physically, you are healthy mentally. Can you leave once you’re there? Is it comforting? Is it terrifying? Is it both? Recovery and the illness are both inviting, but limiting, too. I am spellbound and seduced by the option to turn back to the sickness. I am terrified of it and logically know that there is another way, a better way. The world is still unsettling to me and it is unsettling living in this body. This imagery of an imagined space is a visual of how it feels to live in a suddenly weight restored body with no gradual or natural development. I’ve lived in two bodies, two minds; it’s challenging to always know which one is the right one. I am creating a parallel between the strange, still, and uncanny landscapes/interiors with my self-portraits. I am unsure of what my body should look like now or if it really looks the way I see it. I feel limited and trapped, much like the way the landscapes/interiors evoke. I don’t want to see this alternate world change and I don’t want to see my body change anymore.

John William Keedy

John William Keedy graduated from Trinity University with a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art and Psychology in 2007. In 2013, Keedy received a Master of Fine Arts in Imaging Arts from the Rochester Institute of Technology. An actively exhibiting photographer, Keedy currently resides in San Antonio, Texas.

View more of his work here

Project Statement

"It’s Hardly Noticeable" explores the world of a character who navigates living with an unspecified anxiety-based mental illness. He negotiates situations constructed to highlight the impacts and implications of his differences on his thoughts and behaviors, and by doing so raises question of normalcy. Through constructed tableaus and metaphorical still lifes, the series reveals the relationship between reality and perception, and highlights issues of pathology while questioning stereotypes of normalcy. In 2009 economist Bill Gross used the term New Normal to define the American economic landscape of the very recent past. In ensuing years, the term resonated with culture at large and became an umbrella term for changes in cultural and societal practices, identifying a shift in held notions of what is commonly viewed as acceptable. These images question the legitimacy of applying the term normal in a societal context by prompting a reconsideration of what, if anything, is normal, or at least what is perceived and labeled as such. Is it possible for a society to have a commonly held idea of what is normal, when few individuals in that society actually meet the criteria for normalcy?

Margaret Cogsdill

Margaret Cogsdill, originally from Atlanta, Georgia, received her BA in Philosophy from The College of Charleston in South Carolina. Later she studied photography at Georgia State University and The Savannah College of Art and Design. In 2013 she received her MFA in Imaging Arts from Rochester Institute of Technology. Her work explores themes related to memory, loss and nostalgia. She is currently a contemporary artist based in upstate New York.

View more of Margaret's work here

Artist Statement

The Space Between Us explores the notion of loss as an overarching theme by examining a mother’s illness and its profound impact on her daughter. My work is inspired by a desire to understand my relationship with my mother, Caroline. Throughout my life I have struggled to accept her illness and its impact on me. Through photography, performance, and imaginative play I am able to initiate a new relationship with her and to explore intimacy, connection, nostalgia, and loss. Through this body of work, my mother and I enter into a world of our imagination where we collaborate as artist and mother. We work from a desire to express a time before she was ill and to recognize and reinvent who we are now, and who we can become in the future. As a daughter I turn my lens towards my mother as well as towards my own legacy. I incorporate the familial through a lineage of women and investigate the domestic spaces they inhabit. I look to my grandmother’s house and the surrounding landscape as a place of refuge and contemplation while also shedding light on feelings of fear, melancholia, and disorientation. Woven together, these images create a narrative that speaks to the complexity, richness and ambiguity of our relationship. he fragmented narrative relects my inability to wholly make sense of my mother’s illness. I have struggled to understand, but I am let trying to embrace the uncertainty and meaning of my circumstances.

Kristy Carpenter

Kristy Carpenter was born in 1987 and grew up on her family farm in the small rural town of Bronson, Michigan, where there are probably more farm animals than people and only two working traffic lights. She moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, started college at Harvard University, and fell in love with the city of Boston. Ensuring that she would never be employable and signing herself up for a lifetime of starving artist jokes (usually from my family), Kristy graduated with a BA in Visual and Environmental Studies. She spent the last few years living in Rochester, New York, which she quickly learned is actually the arctic, judging by its cruel weather. Finishing her last year of graduate school at Rochester Institute of Technology (a campus composed almost solely of hipsters and engineers) she recently received her MFA in Imaging Arts. Her work continually takes her back home again, which is where she is now, exploring family ties and my strong connection to place.


View more of Kristy's work here 

Ashley Kauschinger: Your series, Something other than I had planned, takes an in-depth look at your mother's life and your relationship with her. Can you talk about how this series formed and evolved?

Kristy Carpenter: This series about my mother actually evolved from a body of work I had been making about my father. That project, Since We’ve Spoken, was something I spent the majority of my first year of grad school working on. For most of my life, photography held this role as a method of recording, a way to preserve snippets of our lives and the world around us. It wasn’t until college that photography really took on a new meaning for me and became a way to more critically examine and explore important themes in my life. I still use it to record, but now with more conscious motivation and intention. With the work about my father I found myself struggling to capture the absence of someone, trying to build a portrait of a person that was already gone, focusing on the traces left behind and the memories those triggered. Working through those photographs and viewing an environment that was evolving from what once was his into a space that was inhabited and now solely shaped by my mother, my focus too began to change. In many ways I see this series, Something other than I had planned, as the next chapter of that work, a natural evolution from what I was shooting before. The driving force has always been the same – this inherent compulsion to freeze time, to save all these moments spent with my mother, knowing they will eventually be gone.

 I continually find myself going back to a quote from Larry Sultan from his book, Pictures From Home, “What drives me to continue this work is difficult to name. It has more to do with love than with sociology, with being a subject in the drama rather than a witness. . . . I realize that beyond the rolls of film and the few good pictures, the demands of my project and my confusion about its meaning, is the wish to take photography literally. To stop time. I want my parents to live forever.” That’s really what led to this body of work, and really much of my work before it. I’m always trying to stop time, to resist the inevitable, and ultimately preparing myself for the loss I know I’ll have to accept later on. I recognize this now, but it took a long time and a lot of film to come to this realization. In the beginning of this project I was working on several different things, convinced my work was more about the construct of family, focusing on the family album itself. Around the same time I started photographing my mom and the things we were doing together, without a clear idea about what I was trying to capture or what they would be used for later. I also started reexamining our own family traditions and history, asking my mother questions I had never taken the time to voice before. For quite a while I was making work along several different tracks, running mostly parallel to each other, but occasionally intersecting. As is par for my usual process, I tend to shoot a lot, focused on the act of making, while in the background trying to slowly figure out where it’s all leading. For this project I finally had to force myself to take a step back and really examine what was at the root of all these threads, which ended up all leading back to my mother. Some parts had to be discarded, or at least shelved for now, to really return the focus to her and create something more cohesive that an outside viewer could understand and connect with. Once I realized that all these separate pieces were a part of this extended portrait of my mother, the work came together – I knew what I was making and what I was trying to say.

AK: What was your process of photographing your mother? Were you in control of the situations--directing her through your ideas? What was your approach?

KC: A lot of the early images were really a reaction to what was going on around me, a bit spur of the moment. Mostly because at that time I still didn’t know they were going to be anything other than a record of our time together. They were less intentional, more relaxed, and honestly quite fun to make and rediscover amid my contact sheets. As the project continued and I recognized the types of images that worked best and were more engaging, especially to outside observers, my approach to photographing her shifted – I became more of an active participant in the process of shooting. While I enjoy heavily constructed images, I tend to avoid making them myself, as it’s just not a process that feels natural to the way in which I observe and shoot. Some images were still made in passing, something quickly glimpsed and captured as we went about our daily life, while others caused me to step more into the director role, asking her to repeat actions or things I caught her doing, or random outbursts of “don’t move” as I darted to grab my camera when something caught my eye. As my vision for the work became more direct, so did my approach in making the images, as well as my mother’s engagement in the entire process. In the beginning it was new to us both and there was a certain level of awkwardness and distance, which is present in those early photographs. I was trying hard to be only an observer and she was more self-conscious about the image she was presenting to the camera, quick to obscure her identity. As we both became more comfortable with the camera, both in front of and behind it, things shifted. She stopped caring if her hair was done and I stopped worrying about tiptoeing around her and as a result the photographs became much richer, less illustrative, and more nuanced.

AK: How has creating this work influenced your relationship with your mother? What do you feel you learned about her and yourself?

KC: The act of photographing my mother has strengthened our relationship and brought us closer together over the past few years. In the beginning she was really just humoring me, but as it evolved it became more of something we were doing together. It was also a really great excuse to spend so much time with her and really force myself to examine her and her life in a way I hadn’t before. Hearing her stories, looking back through our family albums, and constructing this portrait of her to introduce to an outside audience was such an amazing process of discovery. I think it’s often during the time in our lives where we’re trying to figure out who we are as individuals that we find ourselves turning back to our roots, trying to understand who and what shaped us into the beings we are - at least that’s how it was for me. In order to understand why I photograph the things I do, I had to first uncover the driving force behind these compulsions. Really getting to know my mother as an individual and as a friend, rather than only as a parent, I was able to see more clearly how much her life has influenced me, whether consciously or not.

Bunny Slippers from Kristy Carpenter on Vimeo.

AK: There are also short atmospheric video pieces that accompany the photographs. What do these pieces represent for you in the series? How are the videos presented in a gallery setting?

KC: For me the short video pieces operate more as extended stills or moving images rather than what I tend to think of when I think of video work. Many evolved from still images that seemed to be missing something, photographs that weren’t quite able to capture specific moments and feelings I was experiencing while photographing my mother. In some ways they exist as the moments between some of the more iconic still images, they might be less obvious, but equally vital in creating this experience of understanding the central figure, my mother. They showcase little moments of our daily lives, emphasizing her humanity in ways the still images can’t on their own, with their movement, as well as into a gallery setting. Within the gallery they were presented looped on a screen, interspersed into the linear sequence of photographs hung on the walls. The audio from the videos filtered through the gallery, building more of an encompassing experience for viewers interacting with the work, drawing them into the sounds of the environment they were observing in the photographs.

AK: You recently graduated with an MFA in photography from RIT. For those interested in graduate school what advice do you have for the application process and for the journey to finishing an MFA?

KC: In many ways I feel the answer to both is the same – stick to your guns. In order to do this you first need to discover what they are. I’m not saying you shouldn’t push yourself to try new things or to evolve, but in doing so, you also need to be true to yourself and your work. At times this has been one of the hardest struggles I’ve faced in grad school. It’s so easy to let your work be shifted in the direction someone tells you it should go, whether that’s your professor, a classmate, a portfolio reviewer or someone on the admission committee. Most often those suggestions of where to go with the project or what to try are worth exploring, if for no other reason than to figure out what you don’t want to do or what you don’t want your work to say, you just have to be willing to speak up (confidently and politely) if it doesn’t feel right or you can quickly lose authorship of your work. There’s no point in showing and creating work to please someone else because ultimately they’re just one person who’s opinion might not matter tomorrow or to anyone else down the line. If you’re not excited about and happy with the work you’re making, you’re going to have a very hard time getting anyone else interested in it. When applying to grad school, be yourself, do your research and apply to places that seem to be putting out work that you can connect with. If for example all the faculty working there and the graduating students are producing highly conceptual work and you live for photojournalism, keep looking, run far away, even if they have incredible names there, because if their style and program tend to follow a very different track, you probably won’t be happy there or you’ll feel pressured to follow suit. Submit work you’re proud of and invested in, don’t just try to show a wide range of disconnected pieces. Grad school is more about honing the skills you have, embracing your strengths, finding your unique style/voice and putting that into everything you make.

AK: What is your process of self promotion? How do you balance creating work, promoting it, and living life?

KC: I will be the first to admit that I need to do more of this. In the scheme of things, promotion is always what seems to get the short end of the stick when I’m making work. I guess my main tactic is trying to maintain a fairly consistent presence on the web and doing what I can to get my work out there in the world – keeping my website updated, submitting to calls for entry, trying to stay aware of what others are making and putting out, interacting with the creative community both locally and virtually through things like Tumblr, and always keeping an eye out for opportunities that might pop up. I think one of the greatest assets for me has really been expanding my community of fellow artists. I hate the term networking and feel a bit out of my element approaching it that way, but it’s been so wonderful meeting others out there making such great work and it’s amazing what that can sometimes lead to. We’re all in this together and it’s nice having people who are supportive of each other, passing along opportunities you might not hear of elsewise and offering encouragement. One of the best bits of advice a professor gave us in grad school was to simply be nice and support each other because the longer you’re a part of this community, the smaller it gets and you never know who could be your boss tomorrow, or the curator you’re dying to get your work in front of, or on the hiring committee of that dream job. Simple advice, but very valuable to remember. As for balancing everything, that’s always a challenge – for me, and everyone else it seems. I won’t say I ever do it perfectly, it’s a lot of give an take, and often I do best when I parcel things out and only focus on one at a time. Grad school, like college, really tests your time management skills – and often shows you very quickly how they’re lacking. I tend to do best though when I’m busy, thriving under pressure, so now with the structure of that gone (since graduating), it’s become something I need to have the discipline to create myself in order to stay productive. I think one of the things that’s most important for us as artists, as creative individuals, is to put as much value on that time spent working on creative endeavors as one would with any job or craft. For me the best way of maintaining that balance in all aspects of my life, both creatively and personally, has been to create a schedule or designated time for each part to make sure nothing gets neglected. Granted, it isn’t always something formal, but it’s important to really set aside the time, minus other distractions, to really focus on making new work, working to get your art out in the world, living your life and doing what makes you happy…and in my case now, applying for jobs. It’s always a juggling act, but it’s what keeps life interesting.