Dings & Shadows
Artist
Ellen Carey
(b. 1952)
Date2013
MediumColor photogram
DimensionsFrame Dimension: 36 × 32 in. (91.4 × 81.3 cm)
Sheet Dimension: 24 × 20 in. (61 × 50.8 cm)
Sheet Dimension: 24 × 20 in. (61 × 50.8 cm)
ClassificationsPhotograph
Credit LineGift of the Artist in memory of her parents
Object number2014.85
DescriptionConnecticut-based artist Ellen Carey aligns her artistic practice with the legacy of Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art, as well as the history of photography. Her images lack an identifiable object reference, which prompts the question: “What is this a picture of?” Believing that “if the photograph is a memorial of anything, it is a memorial of its own composition,” Carey investigates the idea of process as subject.Dings & Shadows is a color photogram, which was invented in 1834 by William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877), further developed by Anna Atkins (1799-1871), and later explored by 20th-century artists, such as Man Ray (1890-1976). The photogram is the silhouette of an object placed onto the surface of light-sensitive paper. Traditionally, it uses the sun for exposure, hence the term “sun pictures” or “photogenic drawing.” In the 21st-century, Carey revisits Talbots’s and Atkins’s camera-less methods, only now in full color and using the darkroom’s enlarger as her “sun.” The super-sensitivity of the paper to light is so high that Carey works in total darkness, except upon exposure.
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