Nordic Light: International Festival of Photography

I'm thrilled to announce that I've been invited to exhibit my work in the Nordic Light International Festival of Photography in Kristiansund, Norway!

Established in 2006, the festival is one of the biggest and most important photography events in Europe, and attracts re-knowned photographers from all over the world.  I will be exhibiting 25 photos, both new work as well as old, between April 23 - May 5, 2013.  I'll also be participating in portfolio reviews and be giving a lecture at some point during that time frame, although the exact date has not yet been set- I'll keep you posted!

After the festival, several images will be be catalogued in the Nordic Light International Centre for Photography's "House of Photography", as part of a collective exhibition called "Legends of Honour".

This should be a very exciting festival and I'm honored to be included in their permanent collection!

New work on the website

Just added a handful of new images to the portfolio section of the website!

Working with deeper red gels on one of the models and a new mirror, the most recent work has taken on a disturbing, almost more violent feel.  It's been fascinating to me to see the progression of this work to this point.  It hasn't been my intention to make unsettling images by any means.  The materials, lighting, and visual approach just came together to bring out all of these details that amount to this disquieting feeling.

Continuing with this work, I've been reminded of some of the earlier work I've done with the mirrors- the darker images in particular:

 

Thinking about this has made me go back and find connections in the current body of work with images I produced as far back as 20 years ago....

-CLICK THE JUMP BELOW FOR MORE- 

Connections, Resemblances, and Associations

Last week, I gave a lecture and presentation on my work as a guest at The Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles. The slide talk went very well, and the audience was wonderful.

Every time I give a slide presentation of my portfolio, I try to update it to include my latest work. Not only does it keep the talk fresh and up to date, but it gives me the opportunity to reinterpret some of the older images and sometimes see things in a new context.  Looking at some of the older images with a broader and more developed understanding of the work can provide new insights on what I've done in the past. In preparing for my talk at The Annenberg, I did something I've been meaning to do for a long time...

When I made the image I call "Dead Silences", I was in my second year of grad school. In a critique with 8 fellow students and the professor, one student mentioned that it reminded them of a "Janus" face. Rather than admit that I had never heard of "Janus" before, I nodded in agreement with most of the other students who seemed to understand what this statement meant. I did however research it afterwards, and was surprised at just how accurate this observation was:

According to Wikipedia- "In ancient Roman religion and mythology, Janus is the god of beginnings and transitions, thence also of gates, doors, doorways, endings and time. He is usually a two-faced god since he looks to the future and the past."

The resemblance of Janus in this image still fascinates me to this day, and was only the first of several instances in which one of my images resonated with an unintentional reference.

I had been thinking about this a lot since seeing the connection between one of my recent images and Masaccio's "The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden".  For the slide talk at The Annenberg, I thought it might be fun to illustrate some of the other inadvertent analogies that have appeared in some of my work...

- Click the jump below to read more -

IRIS Nights Presents: An Evening With Connie Imboden

Reflections: An Evening with Connie Imboden Thursday, March 22, 6:30-8:00pm Connie Imboden has spent more than 30 years using photography to examine, distort and redefine the human body. Imboden's work is in the collections of many major museums including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, the Bibliotheque Nationale in France and the Ludwig Museum in Germany. Her photographs have been exhibited in an extensive range of group and solo shows at galleries and museums throughout Europe, the United States, South America and most recently China. Her first book of images, Out of Darkness, won the Silver Medal in Switzerland's "Schonste Bucher Aus Aller Welt (Most Beautiful Book in the World)" competition in 1993. Her most recent book, Reflections was released in 2009. Imboden currently teaches photography at the Maryland Institute College of Art as well as many workshops around the world. Imboden's photographs, seen through the camera and free from darkroom or computer enhancement, display the strangeness of reality in an age of digital manipulation. She will discuss the technical issues involved in relying on her vision to transform the subject matter and how an intuitive creative process has kept her fascinated with the same body of work throughout the years. Tickets for this event will be released online on Wednesday, March 14 at 12 noon and Thursday, March 15 at 9:30am. Once tickets are released, you may register by clicking here. Each person is limited to two tickets. Please note that our lectures tend to fill up quickly. Don't be discouraged if you are unable to get tickets through our online ticketing system. The standby list for each lecture begins at 5pm on the day of the event in person at the Photography Space. About 10 minutes prior to the start of the lecture, we release any seats that have not been claimed by ticketholders to our standby guests. Out of respect to our speaker and the other guests, late arrivals to the lecture are discouraged.

FOR MORE EVENT INFO, CLICK HERE!

The Annenberg Space for Photography | 2000 Avenue of the Stars, #10 | Los Angeles | CA | 90067

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lynda.com debut!

Back in June, I had the pleasure of meeting and working with Ben Long at The Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute workshops.  In addition to his work with many magazines such as MacWeek, MacUser, Macworld, and CreativePro.com, Ben is also a regular contributor to lynda.com, an award winning online instructional video library.

lynda.com produces thousands of video tutorials and training on various topics.  While most of their video's feature courses on software, they have been working towards focusing on where creativity and technology intersect.  Some of their latest videos are aimed at educating not just the practical aspects of a given discipline, but the artistic understanding and creative vision that can be applied.

Ben Long's Foundations of Photography series has been a huge success with lynda.com, addressing technical knowledge of photography with an understanding of the aesthetics of it as well.  Following our work together during the summer at Quartz mountain, Ben and I were reunited for fall courses at The Oklahoma Arts Institute.  The folks at lynda.com took the opportunity to incorporate the workshop into a new course Ben was working on for the site,  Foundations of Photography: Composition.  We were followed by a camera crew who filmed our lectures on creativity, intuition and seeing, as well as critiques and discussions with the students.




This was such a new and fantastic project to work on, and it was wonderful to work with Ben and everyone from lynda.com.  The Foundations of Photography: Composition video series was published on lynda.com on 12-23-11 and has already been a huge success, highlighting as one of the most viewed courses.  I highly encourage anyone interested to check out the series, you won't be disappointed!

New Images on the Website

Just added a handful of new images to the portfolio section of the website!

I've continued working with the mirrors in color, most recently playing with gels to have more control over the color and how it defines the form.  The color has brought a more dynamic element to the images, and the colors I've begun incorporating have been slightly more bold than they were previously.

Check out the 2010-present section at ConnieImboden.com to see some of the latest work!

Provincetown Workshop 2011

Another recent workshop I had the honor of teaching at was the Photography Workshops at The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.  I've been a part of this workshop for the past 4 years, and every year has been an incredibly fun and fantastic experience.

For one thing, Provincetown is SUCH a cool place.

The Parade

The workshop was August 14th-19th, which happens to be one of the biggest weekends of the summer for this little town.  On August 18th, we had the chance to see the town's Gay Pride Parade, a truly outrageous, fun, and all around extravagant event.  It was such a blast, you never knew what was next...