Ardine Nelson

Inventing Landscape

May 1 - June 25, 2015

Black and white photography, landscape, secret spaces, plastic cameras, multiple views as one, mans’ arrangement within the landscape: all these are my most basic means of expression. Although I have worked in many other ways these are the ideas I return to. When I visit a new place, whatever else I may do, my Diana camera comes out of the bag and I explore. The resulting work both documents and interprets the environments I find.

The in-camera creation of these images become my response to a particular place. These images are not a documentary view of the scene in front of me, but one created over a period of time. After watching me photograph a friend referred to my actions as a dance I did with the environment. I had not thought before about how I might appear to a passerby but this would be an accurate description. As I create these images I am moving in toward, away from, and around within an environment. The in-camera, overlapped frames allow me to look down, then up, then 30 inches away, then 40 feet away and back to 5 feet in front of me, as I move around. I am recording this visual experience with my simple, altered plastic Diana camera. Previously I had been restricted to overlapping at most three frames at a time due to the limitations of enlargers. Now, with the ability to scan much longer strips of 120mm film, I am able to complete images in the manner I had always wished.

The works in this exhibition represent my visual interpretation of garden areas in Dresden, Germany, Prague, Czech Republic and Slovakia. There are formal, well manicured, sculpture / planted gardens of historical sites and there are the Schrebergardens, kept in the family sometimes over generations.

These prints are archival inkjet prints on rag paper. Because each panorama image is created in camera from a series of overlapping frames the length of each image on the film will vary. I have printed as small as 22” wide and as long as 90”. The final height of the image adjusts accordingly. For consistency I have printed to a specific length and allowed the height of the image area to vary accordingly.

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Ardine Nelson is currently Professor Emerita in the Department of Art's Photography program, The Ohio State University. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, has received Ohio Arts Council and Greater Columbus Arts Council artists fellowships, was a GCAC visiting artist in Spain in the early 90’s and has visited Slovakia to teaching alternative camera workshop.

Professor Nelson’s practice includes the traditional and non-traditional cameras and materials in photography and, since 1990, has incorporated the digital area including archival ink jet printing. As an early experimenter with Polaroid materials, she discovered one and has worked with other transfer processes. Nelson is recognized for her continued bodies of work with alternative cameras; pinhole and Diana plastic cameras. Recently, Nelson’s German Schrebergarden work has been recognized through a Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts research and development grant and John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for 2008-09. Her current ongoing body of work titled Ceilings explores formal visual aspects of structures in the process of repurposing / renovation or about to be razed. Though well versed in the possibilities of digital manipulation, her personal work is all camera based and only employs the computer as a printing device.