Ellen Slotnick
Quondam
Quondam from the 16th century Latin, meaning formerly. The past is something that I find myself constantly searching for and examining. The work in this collection represents an homage to the photographs and photographers known as the Pictorialists. Once considered the first international style and aesthetic movement in photography, the core of the Pictorialist movement thrived from 1860 until 1915 and then started to wane, with some work still being done up until the 1940s. The mission of the movement was to represent truth and beauty of subject matter, tonality and composition rather than the documentation of reality.
All of these images were taken with a thirty-five year old camera that uses no battery and no electrical components. To further achieve the antique look of the Pictorialists, long exposures were used to create the feeling of movement and atmospheric effects in nature that are present in some of the images
This project runs head on into the 21st century when the negatives produced are scanned into my computer and then digitally processed, ending with a tonal application that has the appearance of a platinum/palladium print, one of the traditional printing methods of the time.
During the height of the Pictorialist movement around of the turn of the century, artists of the Linked Ring in Great Britian, the Photo Club in Paris, the Kleeblat in Germany and Austria and the Photo-Secession in the United States used Pictorialism to promote photography as Fine Art. Some of the most well known Pictorialists include Henry Peach Robinson, Peter Henry Emerson, Frederick Evans, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Gertrude Käsibier, Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz and Clarence White.
Artist Bio
Ellen Toby Slotnick is a Fine Art Landscape photographer from Newton, MA. Her most recent work is focused on the relationship of the natural world coexisting with the man-made. In some cases a peaceful coexistence in others nature has taken the upper hand.
Slotnick’s work is held in the permanent collection of the Newton Wellesley Hospital in Newton, Massachusetts and in various private collections in the United States and abroad. As a participant in the DeCordova Museum’s corporate lending program Slotnick has work on exhibit at corporations in the Boston Area.
Slotnick has had two solo exhibitions and participated in several group exhibitions. She displayed work at the Lafayette City Center Corridor in Boston, a satellite location of the Griffin Museum of Photography.
With a BS degree from Rochester Institute of Technology as her base, Slotnick is constantly continuing her studies by joining workshops and classes. The Photographer’s Project at Massachusetts College of Art and the Atelier at the Griffin Museum have been supplemented by workshops taught by John Paul Caponigro, Seth Resnick, Tillman Crane and Ron Rosenstock.
http://www.ellentobyslotnick.photography
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