Seze Devres
Artist Statement
My experimentations with photography began with the desire to create a new visual language that extends beyond the traditional bounds of representational photography: to produce what seems to be a contradiction in terms–painterly cameraless light drawings. Visually they are a lyrical merging of painting and photography, inspired by Cubism, Futurism, and the contemporary use of digital manipulation in sound and art.
I compose on sheets of film, using the light provided by a color enlarger, drawing with/from the basic materials commonly found in a darkroom: beakers, tape, cardboard, and knives. The tools are rough, but the photographs, once completed, are complex. This process enables me to make luminous explorations of forms, detailed with graphic slashes as complimentary shadows are interrupted by bright sparks of light.
For over eight years I have been evolving and perfecting my technique within the medium of the traditional photogram, which is a photograph made without the use of a camera or a lens. By refining my control of color and linearity, opacity and transparency, I seek to create a depth rarely seen in most photograms. Unlike typical photograms, my images are not silhouetted outlines of objects. And unlike much abstract photography, my images are not close-ups of patterns and shapes seen through a lens. These photographs are a convergence of light and mass built from a rich layering of shapes and gestures. They exist in the own other-worldly kaleidoscopic space, to be interpreted through our experience with the “real” world, and thus create an intimate reading within the viewer.
