Amy J. Hagberg - Artist Statement -
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My Work Illustrates the way time transforms the past.  I utilize analog photography as an instrument of time; marking moments by opening a camera's shutter.  The old New England homesteads I often photograph symbolize people lost within the past.  The reflection images, all from a single negative, compress what is behind and what is before into a single moment of now.  Our perception of today is always colored by past experience and future dreams.      I further investigate time through the slow exposures in my handmade pinhole cameras, using 8"X10" photographic paper for the negatives.  This process mirrors the life experience: sometimes a horrible failure occurs, and sometimes a surprise gift is bestowed.  I also create composite images by physically combining two images.  I adhere one image printed on translucent vellum over a second printed on cold press paper.  This partially obscures the viewer's gaze from the original image beneath and mimics the shape-shifting of time: the present reshaping our memory      The sculptures I contruct for photographing are totum interpretations of lost people and places.  Sometimes I burn these sculptures in effigy to set them free.  I photograph these events with pinhole cameras, the slow exposures capturing the light of spiritual release.      The past may never be revised.  But we may choose to use the past as a vehicle to create something new.
- Amy J. Hagberg - 7 Dragonfly Circle - Limerick - ME - 04048 -
Check Out Work in Progress @ http://amyhagberg.blogspot.com/