1701 Saint Mary's Street, Raleigh, North Carolina 27608
http://www.dianahbloomfield.com
Diana has been an exhibiting photographer for over 25 years. She has exhibited her work throughout the United States and has received numerous awards for her images, including a 1985 New Jersey State Visual Arts Fellowship, and several Regional Artist Project Grants from the United Arts of Raleigh, North Carolina, most recently for 2006-07. Her imagery was included in the most recent edition of Pinhole Photography: Rediscovering a Historic Technique, and featured in the Pinhole Journal. Her work has also been published in Camera Arts and in The Post-Factory Journal.
Diana has also organized and curated several pinhole and alternative process exhibitions, including “Pure Light: Southern Pinhole Photography,” shown at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA), in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in 2004. The exhibit, “Old is New Again: Alternative Processes,” which was originally shown at the Green Hill Center for North Carolina Art, in Greensboro, North Carolina, was invited for exhibition at the 2004 Pingyao International Photography Festival, in Pingyao, China. Diana was also an invited artist to the first Qinghai International Photography Festival, in Xining, China, where she exhibited in the summer of 2006.
Diana lives and works in Raleigh, NC, where she teaches photography workshops, including at the NC State University Crafts Center, in Raleigh, and at Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies, in Durham, NC.North Carolina Landscapes These images of the Southern landscape are like dreams from my childhood. Portions of this landscape, as I knew it growing up, remain undisturbed, while too much are rapidly disappearing. So I continue to document these images of North Carolina kudzu, swamp cypress, and the gnarled and twisted canopy of the maritime forests along the North Carolina coastline, which are all so familiar to me.
To emphasize the dream-like quality of this landscape, I used a pinhole camera and ancient printing processes of platinum/palladium and cyanotype.
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(1) Middle Island, 8x10 platinum-palladium (pinhole)
(2) Lake Ellis Simon at Dusk, 11x14 toned cyanotype (pinhole)
(3) Kudzu, diptych, toned cyanotype (pinhole)
(4) Albemarle Sound at Dusk, 9x9 toned cyanotype
(5) Bald Head Creek, 8x10 cyanotype over platinum-palladium (pinhole)
(6) Palm, 8x10 cyanotype over platinum-palladium (pinhole)
(7) Capitol Grounds, 11x14 platinum-palladium (pinhole)The Midway The very first boardwalk amusement park I ever saw was just off Bogue Sound, situation on a little corner of land near Atlantic Beach, NC. Nothing could match it - a whirling kaleidoscope of color, music, and bright lights that transformed an otherwise mundane bit of seaside landscape into a magical dreamland.
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Not until I was much older, did I become aware of the other side of that dreamy landscape - the dirt, the grime, the decay, and the seediness that is frequently found in amusement parks everywhere. The Midway is an ongoing series of images made at the NC State Fair, which began in 1997/98. They are an attempt to recreate that same magical dreamland I first saw as a child. They emanate more from my mind's eye, rather than from any litteral perspective. For me, these images also possess a lack of immediacy - an elusiveness - that seems timeless.
The Midway series:
(8) Spinning Top, 8x10 platinum-palladium (pinhole)
(9) Ripley's Believe it Or Not, 8x10 platinum-palladium (pinhole)
(10) Clown, 11x14 platinum-palladium (pinhole)
(11) Swing Ride, 8x10 platinum-palladium (pinhole)Annalee These images are of my now 20-year old daughter, Annalee, and are part of a continuing series that began in 2002. They are intended to work somewhat like a metaphor - an extended portrait that renders more the essence of who she is, rather than any literal documentation.
I've always felt that to truly capture a person or place in a single image - as if in freeze-frame - is difficult, if not impossible. Annalee was at an age where she was changing so much, from one day to the next, that I wanted to suggest a passage of time - a visual narrative that was somewhat ethereal and ever-changing as she seemed.
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So I chose to use a pinhole camera, which - with its long exposures and unique perspectives - seems to play with time and space in unusual ways, and offers a fluidity not often found in still photography. I wanted a dreamlike quality and a sense of timelessness, and so printing these in the 19th Century processes of platinum and cyanotype seemed to work well for these images, which are obviously interpretive for the viewer.
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This series was very much a collaboration between my daughter and me. The results were almost like found images - both a surprise and a revelation.
Annalee Series:
(12) Girls, 8x10 cyanotype over platinum-palladium (pinhole)
(13) Listening Vessel, 9x9 platinum-palladium
(14) Listening Vessel II, diptych, platinum-palladium
(15) Girl on Beach, 8x10 cyanotype over platinum-palladium (pinhole)
(16) Sarah & Annalee at 15, cyanotype over platinum-palladium (pinhole)
(17) Clouds, 8x10 cyanotype over platinum (pinhole)
(18) Millennium, 8x10 platinum-palladium (pinhole)All prints US $ 600,00 except n° 3 & 14 = US $ 400,00