Higher Art

Ann Parker

Biography

Using only a light source and a lens to project forms onto archival colour-sensitive paper, photographer Ann Parker has eliminated both film and camera to produce Photograms she calls Botanical Metamorphics. Parker's work explores the structure of botanical subjects and reveals their inner forms.

"As a society we have become sadly out of touch with the powerful simplicity of nature," she says. "We are presented with an overwhelming choice of fruits, vegetables and flowers, but they more and more frequently come to us dyed, saturated with chemicals, bleached, dehydrated, reconstituted, gassed and tightly cocooned in plastic. I want this new body of work to not only amaze and delight, but also emotionally involve the viewer in the absolute beauty of botanical forms."

The photogram, as described by the American Heritage Dictionary, was best known as a post World War 1 movement in Europe. In 1917, a German named Christian Schad experimented with the technique and called his works Schadographs. In 1921 Man Ray, and American painter living in Paris, saw some of Schad’s Work and started some of his own experiments which he called Rayographs. The following year the Hungarian Laszo Maholy-Nagy in turn saw his won experiments that he called Photograms. Popular for a few years this movement had, by the 1930’s, passed into photographic history."My technique is a color process where light is passed through the object, then enlarged onto photosensitive color paper," Ms. Parker explains. "This allows for tiny details to print without the graininess of conventional photography even when greatly enlarged. The resulting images open a new chapter in the history of botanical art, which has, in the past, been mostly associated with watercolor paintings, drawings and engravings.”

Parker studied at Yale University and Rhode Island School of Design graduating with a Bachelor in Fine arts. She resides in Massachusetts with partner and fellow artist and author Avon Neal.

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Solo Exhibits

1982 Santa Fe Centre for Photography, Santa Fe, NM
1983 Focus Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1985 National Museum of Art, La Paz, Bolivia
1986 The Princeton Club, NY,NY; Princeton University Library, Princeton,          NJ
1987 Galleria Principle, Altos de Chevron, Dominican Republic;
         El Instituto Dominicano de Cultura Hispanica, Santo Domingo,          Dom. Republic; Gallery of Graphic Arts, NY
1988 Maxwell Museum, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
1991 Galerie Twerenbold, Lucerne, Switzerland
1992 San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX
1993 Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA
1994 Gallery of Graphic Arts, NY
1995 Gallery of Graphic Arts, NY
1996 William Benton Museum, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT; Ute          Stebich Gallery, Lennox, MA; University of Massachusetts Medical          Centre Gallery, Worcester, MA
1997 Sony Gallery, American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt
1998 Galleria Principle, Altos de Chevron, Dominican Republic
1999 Casa de Chevron, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; Tower Hill          Botanic Gardens, West Boylston, MA
2000 Gallery of Graphic Arts, NY; Ute Stebich Gallery, Lenox, MA
2001 Lyman Allyn Art Museum, New London, CT; Troyer Gallery,          Washington, DC; Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, Sonoma, CA

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