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Lynn Silverman

Animation / Video / Film, Photography, Visual / Media

For most of my artistic career, one of the challenges has been to couple the descriptive power of the photograph with the expressive qualities of light. At times I approach the world as if I were a surveyor, using a single object or landscape feature as a point of departure. Past subjects have included clouds, window frames, cemeteries, or more recently, photographic scrolls. Working with the materiality of light, the line between figuration and abstraction may become less defined. Depicting the effect of light and time on everyday surfaces is a way of excavating memory and embraces the role of light in the transformation of these surfaces. While my hands operate the mechanical and chemical components of the process, the magic is revealed in the unexpected results the eye can’t see.

Working with groups of photographs on the same theme makes it possible to explore a subject in greater depth. Through the process of editing for my books and videos, more nuanced relationships are revealed between light and dark, outside and inside, nature and culture.

About the Artist

     The experience of living on three different continents, North America, Europe, and Australia, has had a profound effect on Lynn Silverman's practice as an artist. After graduating with a BFA in Photography, Lynn moved to Australia. She was drawn to Australia’s vast inland desert landscape, which was the subject of her first one-person exhibition, Horizons (1981), at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne.      In 1983, Lynn moved to the United Kingdom.  While teaching photography at several art schools, Lynn published four books, Furniture Fictions (1989), 1:1 (1993), Corporation House (1996), and Interior Light (1997), and participated in solo and group exhibitions including Viewfindings: Women Photographers: Landscape and Environment (1994) and the ground-breaking Inside the Visible (1996).      Lynn returned to the United States in 1999. Since then, Lynn received a Fulbright Scholarship in 2010 to teach and photograph in the Czech Republic. Exhibitions include Outlook-Insight: Windows in the Arts, at the Museum Sinclair-Haus in Bad Homberg, Germany (2018) and Works in Black and White at the Klompching Gallery Brooklyn, New York (2019).      Working with video is a recent development in Lynn’s practice. Exploring the space between still and moving imagery, has created an opportunity to harness light in a different way in order to forge connections between people, places, and objects. In 2020, an earlier iteration of Memory Foam was exhibited in a group show, “Trust the Story” at the Baldwin Photographic Gallery, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro. The video was also included in “archive: 1” (2021), a collaboration between the Stand4 Gallery, Brooklyn, New York and the Intermission Museum of Art.  In 2022, the full-length version of Memory Foam premiered at Goya Contemporary, Baltimore.

Lynn Silverman website https://www.lynnsilverman.com

Featured Work

Photos

Recently, while sorting through boxes of family photographs with a view to culling the collection of images, I discovered an assortment of tightly rolled scrolls. These scrolls, depicting groups of campers, rows of school children, and adults sitting at tables, were taken decades ago with a wide-angle banquet camera. Back in the studio, I began to strategically unfurl and rotate these scrolls, sometimes lighting both the front and back of the image, as a way of revealing simultaneously the photograph and autographs scribbled on the back. Any trees included in the picture were also of interest, suggesting ways of manipulating the scroll to emphasize their presence. Given the relationship a photograph inevitably has with the past, my desire is to focus on the act of remembering. The contortions of the scrolls—the twisting, curling, and blurring during exposure—mirror the fragility of memory. My manipulation of the scrolls attempts to evoke how the gap between the photograph and memory continues to widen as the time when the scroll was taken recedes further into the past. These individuals, who have long since passed, are destined to reside forever in a world of sport stadiums, sumptuous table settings, and forests as the actual photographs face an uncertain future.
Recently, while sorting through boxes of family photographs with a view to culling the collection of images, I discovered an assortment of tightly rolled scrolls. These scrolls, depicting groups of campers, rows of school children, and adults sitting at tables, were taken decades ago with a wide-angle banquet camera. Back in the studio, I began to strategically unfurl and rotate these scrolls, sometimes lighting both the front and back of the image, as a way of revealing simultaneously the photograph and autographs scribbled on the back. Any trees included in the picture were also of interest, suggesting ways of manipulating the scroll to emphasize their presence. Given the relationship a photograph inevitably has with the past, my desire is to focus on the act of remembering. The contortions of the scrolls—the twisting, curling, and blurring during exposure—mirror the fragility of memory. My manipulation of the scrolls attempts to evoke how the gap between the photograph and memory continues to widen as the time when the scroll was taken recedes further into the past. These individuals, who have long since passed, are destined to reside forever in a world of sport stadiums, sumptuous table settings, and forests as the actual photographs face an uncertain future.
Recently, while sorting through boxes of family photographs with a view to culling the collection of images, I discovered an assortment of tightly rolled scrolls. These scrolls, depicting groups of campers, rows of school children, and adults sitting at tables, were taken decades ago with a wide-angle banquet camera. Back in the studio, I began to strategically unfurl and rotate these scrolls, sometimes lighting both the front and back of the image, as a way of revealing simultaneously the photograph and autographs scribbled on the back. Any trees included in the picture were also of interest, suggesting ways of manipulating the scroll to emphasize their presence. Given the relationship a photograph inevitably has with the past, my desire is to focus on the act of remembering. The contortions of the scrolls—the twisting, curling, and blurring during exposure—mirror the fragility of memory. My manipulation of the scrolls attempts to evoke how the gap between the photograph and memory continues to widen as the time when the scroll was taken recedes further into the past. These individuals, who have long since passed, are destined to reside forever in a world of sport stadiums, sumptuous table settings, and forests as the actual photographs face an uncertain future.
The generation and conveyance of energy is a fundamental concern in Lifelines, a series of photographs depicting electric cords. At least one of the cables shown in the image carries the electricity to the light source that illuminates the scene. Like the activity of drawing which employs line and shading, the cable changes its identity from a crisp line to a faint trace as if it was a ray, wave, particle, halo or flare of light. The narrative aspect of the cord’s trajectory and the use of everyday materials impart a palpable quality to the light. My rendering of the cord is a way of giving life to light.
The generation and conveyance of energy is a fundamental concern in Lifelines, a series of photographs depicting electric cords. At least one of the cables shown in the image carries the electricity to the light source that illuminates the scene. Like the activity of drawing which employs line and shading, the cable changes its identity from a crisp line to a faint trace as if it was a ray, wave, particle, halo or flare of light. The narrative aspect of the cord’s trajectory and the use of everyday materials impart a palpable quality to the light. My rendering of the cord is a way of giving life to light.
The windows depicted in Lookout were photographed in the United States, Great Britain, Australia, and the Czech Republic, countries where I lived for an extended period. Numbering over one hundred images, this series is a collection of observations into how we live in proximity to other people and nature, and how we strike a balance between our desire for contact, concern for security, and the need for privacy. Each window serves as a point of orientation in the way it frames a variety of situations. Access to the view outside is mediated by the design of the window dressing, such as curtains, blinds, or shutters, which affect the flow of natural light. The presence of objects further enhances the viewer’s subjective position in relation to the external view. The contrast between inside and outside may be seen as a dialogue between private and public spaces, the self and the other.

Videos

  • Memory Foam

    See more information about Memory Foam
    Password: fo4m
    (Please use headphones when viewing in order to get the full impact of the sound.)

    Working with video is a recent development in my practice. For many years, still photography has been my choice of medium. Exploring the space between still and moving imagery, has created an opportunity to harness light in a different way in order to forge connections between people, places, and objects. I am drawn to architecture and interiors, and what these spaces disclose about our social and personal lives.

    A hybrid work combining black and white photographs with sound, Memory Foam depicts an imaginary house that is a composite of views assembled from twenty-six different homes. The video features ordinary lamps that illuminate a variety of situations and objects. The soundtrack, composed by Jason Sloan, is drawn from audio recordings of the sound generated by the electromagnetic field unique to each light source depicted in the video.

    For most of us, “home” connotes a personal space and, as such, may be thought of as a reflection of the self. Memory Foam attempts to blur the boundary between the individual and the world through shared experiences as evidenced, for instance, in the overlapping infrastructure collaged from several basements or the number of ubiquitous framed photographs of family and friends that appear throughout the video. Clock faces serve as pauses or intervals between groups of images. The presence of digital technology explores how our personal environment is increasingly mediated and monitored by technology.

    I believe that Memory Foam is a unique way of investigating the interface between still imagery, animation, and sound. Throughout the film, light and sound are the connecting threads as the camera makes its way from the basement foundation to the attic eaves, highlighting intimate details of domestic life along the way.
    Medium: Video
    Year: 2022
    Details: 13'51"