JORDANNA KALMAN (Poughkeepsie NY, USA)
Biography:
Jordanna Kalman lives and works in NY. Her work explores loneliness, femininity and individuality. She received her MA in photography from the London College of Communication and her BFA in photography from Purchase College. Jordanna has had her work shown nationally, internationally and online. In addition to her practice she runs the online photography gallery Streit House Space and the Instagram residency program Streit Lab. She works on many different things very slowly all at once.
Artist Statement:
When considered as an object the photograph exists physically in the world, it belongs to someone; it gets held, it has weight, value. I’ve been interested in this concept for some time.
It was this interest plus the recurrent use of my images online without my permission that motivated the series Little Romances.
I have always made very personal work, my current emotional state and interests get translated directly into my images. In sharing this work online, sometimes it is treated with respect and I am credited, but more often not.
In Little Romances I photograph prints of my photographs and they become a physical object; my object. I surround them with elements from my garden or other personal items not to evoke nostalgia or sentimentality but to deepen my physical connection/claim to these images and distance them from the viewer.
The object-image becomes obscured, repurposed, diverted, so that its original intent remains safe from viewing and at the same time it lends itself to a new narrative.
Practice Statement: How does photographing on film (or using your material photographic process of predilection) inform your artistic practice?
I use film because it provides many sensory experiences that enrich the practice of creating. The physical process involved in bringing the images into being will never not seem magical to me.
