My artwork centers on land and place: its power, beauty, past and present, use and abuse, and our desire for it. I am motivated and guided by my love of the land and climate crisis activism. I want my artwork to enter the imagination and heart of the viewer and serve as a spark to ignite thinking about how one chooses to live.
I photograph for reasons Robert Adams says in Beauty In Photography about his essays, “the effort we all make, photographers and non-photographers, to affirm life without lying about it. And then to behave in accord with our vision.” I am also interested in David Abram’s notion that the mind and consciousness may not be a human possession, but “rather a property of the earthly biosphere – a property in which we all participate.” And ”to acknowledge this affinity between the air and awareness…” And “Each place, that is to say, is a unique state of mind, and many beings that constitute and dwell within that locale … all participate in, and partake of the particular mind of the place.”
SELECTED BODIES OF WORK
Ways of Knowing
Wanting to express how I experience the land–viscerally, emotionally, artistically, and scientifically–led me to pair the botanical vouchers of the plants with the photographs, in a sense putting the physical and spiritual together so they may create new considerations that inform and deepen our relationship with nature.
A Place to Land
With ecological collapse and social injustice weighing heavy, a group of us boarded the Searchship to look for another place to live. These images are places discovered on this fictional travel looking for a place to live sustainably and with justice for all. But I realize there is no Planet B and whatever that community will be, it’s here on Earth. It’s here we have to reimagine and create a new way of living.
Points of View is an exploration of self - looking out, in, and at appearances. It considers the range of feelings and thoughts from inside a dark room, from entrapment and loss to a safe refuge and stillness, beauty and truth. This series is concerned more with the nature of oneself than of the land.
The J9 Suite is an ongoing series of a place, the J9 Ranch in San Diego’s high desert backcountry. My granddad first worked on the property in 1900, and as newlyweds in 1914 he and my grandmother moved onto the property and registered the J9 cattle brand. This is the place my mother grew up and my sister and I played as children. I started photographing here with my 8 x 10” pinhole in 1998. The images are documents and a meditation on place, nature, and change
Every Square Inch is a companion series with the J9 Suite using digital color images. These photographs come from a desire to know every square inch of the ranch, a longing to remember everything there, and fears of the human and natural events that may damage it. I collect botanicals. Their beauty surprises me. The possibility of their disappearance urges me to create an impossible photographic archive of the totality of this place. I press the botanicals to save them from a future thief. I'm creating a plant atlas and the botanical pressings are carefully placed on some photographs, the images an expression of the land and seed packets. This ongoing series began in 2005. It revels in the atmosphere of the ranch and attempts to create a thorough record of the place.
The Parks and Garden series is an homage to the people who have created and protect our land. I search for places that express open and conditional time, where both the past, present, and future are felt, where many moments are captured, where a sense of the universal may be experienced, and where respect for life and the land that supports us exists.
Land Marks, a photo-based assemblage series, does not idealize the nature of cities, does not provide meditative vistas, nor does it speak to the romantic sublime. These works look at small areas on the street and sidewalk and their link to our industrial-based lifestyle. Combining photographic documents of the street with objects, I aim to create a view that inspires us to ponder our lifestyles and imagine other possibilities.
Evacuate is a fictional series of people and places in unknown situations of danger and disaster and considers the sense of doom that hangs in the air, that is blasted at us everyday.
DisPlays of Nature explores the artificial environments of our culture that increasingly have become the main experience of nature for many - zoos, water parks, amusement parks. What happens when people have no first-hand experience of wild nature, of un-manicured natural places, of getting dirty, of the silence when nothing else is around?
BIO
Louise Russell is a photo-based artist who photographs with an 8 x 10 inch pinhole camera and digital cameras producing silver gelatin and inkjet prints. Her work has been featured on Lenscractch.com, presented at Open Show San Diego, 2018, and been exhibited at Soho Photo Gallery, Size Matters Medium Festival, Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts, PhotoPlace, and other galleries. She was an adjunct instructor of photography at Grossmont College. She’s a member of Snow Creek and Strong Strong Womem Collectives.
EDUCATION
MA, Educational Technology, San Diego State University
BA, Social Science, San Diego State University
SELECTED EXHIBITS
I photograph for reasons Robert Adams says in Beauty In Photography about his essays, “the effort we all make, photographers and non-photographers, to affirm life without lying about it. And then to behave in accord with our vision.” I am also interested in David Abram’s notion that the mind and consciousness may not be a human possession, but “rather a property of the earthly biosphere – a property in which we all participate.” And ”to acknowledge this affinity between the air and awareness…” And “Each place, that is to say, is a unique state of mind, and many beings that constitute and dwell within that locale … all participate in, and partake of the particular mind of the place.”
SELECTED BODIES OF WORK
Ways of Knowing
Wanting to express how I experience the land–viscerally, emotionally, artistically, and scientifically–led me to pair the botanical vouchers of the plants with the photographs, in a sense putting the physical and spiritual together so they may create new considerations that inform and deepen our relationship with nature.
A Place to Land
With ecological collapse and social injustice weighing heavy, a group of us boarded the Searchship to look for another place to live. These images are places discovered on this fictional travel looking for a place to live sustainably and with justice for all. But I realize there is no Planet B and whatever that community will be, it’s here on Earth. It’s here we have to reimagine and create a new way of living.
Points of View is an exploration of self - looking out, in, and at appearances. It considers the range of feelings and thoughts from inside a dark room, from entrapment and loss to a safe refuge and stillness, beauty and truth. This series is concerned more with the nature of oneself than of the land.
The J9 Suite is an ongoing series of a place, the J9 Ranch in San Diego’s high desert backcountry. My granddad first worked on the property in 1900, and as newlyweds in 1914 he and my grandmother moved onto the property and registered the J9 cattle brand. This is the place my mother grew up and my sister and I played as children. I started photographing here with my 8 x 10” pinhole in 1998. The images are documents and a meditation on place, nature, and change
Every Square Inch is a companion series with the J9 Suite using digital color images. These photographs come from a desire to know every square inch of the ranch, a longing to remember everything there, and fears of the human and natural events that may damage it. I collect botanicals. Their beauty surprises me. The possibility of their disappearance urges me to create an impossible photographic archive of the totality of this place. I press the botanicals to save them from a future thief. I'm creating a plant atlas and the botanical pressings are carefully placed on some photographs, the images an expression of the land and seed packets. This ongoing series began in 2005. It revels in the atmosphere of the ranch and attempts to create a thorough record of the place.
The Parks and Garden series is an homage to the people who have created and protect our land. I search for places that express open and conditional time, where both the past, present, and future are felt, where many moments are captured, where a sense of the universal may be experienced, and where respect for life and the land that supports us exists.
Land Marks, a photo-based assemblage series, does not idealize the nature of cities, does not provide meditative vistas, nor does it speak to the romantic sublime. These works look at small areas on the street and sidewalk and their link to our industrial-based lifestyle. Combining photographic documents of the street with objects, I aim to create a view that inspires us to ponder our lifestyles and imagine other possibilities.
Evacuate is a fictional series of people and places in unknown situations of danger and disaster and considers the sense of doom that hangs in the air, that is blasted at us everyday.
DisPlays of Nature explores the artificial environments of our culture that increasingly have become the main experience of nature for many - zoos, water parks, amusement parks. What happens when people have no first-hand experience of wild nature, of un-manicured natural places, of getting dirty, of the silence when nothing else is around?
BIO
Louise Russell is a photo-based artist who photographs with an 8 x 10 inch pinhole camera and digital cameras producing silver gelatin and inkjet prints. Her work has been featured on Lenscractch.com, presented at Open Show San Diego, 2018, and been exhibited at Soho Photo Gallery, Size Matters Medium Festival, Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts, PhotoPlace, and other galleries. She was an adjunct instructor of photography at Grossmont College. She’s a member of Snow Creek and Strong Strong Womem Collectives.
EDUCATION
MA, Educational Technology, San Diego State University
BA, Social Science, San Diego State University
SELECTED EXHIBITS
- Strong Strong Women, The Frame Maker, 2020
- Lenscratch Posting of Points of View, April 2019
- Alleghany Arts Council National Photography Exhibition, Alleghany, Maryland, 2019
- 6th Open Call, Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts, Providence, Rhode Island, 2019
- Open Show San Diego, 2017
- Krappy Kamera, Soho Photo Gallery, New York City, 2017
- Size Matters, Low Gallery and Medium Festival of Photography, San Diego, 2016
- Alternative Cameras: Pinhole to Plastic, PhotoPlace Gallery, Middlebury, VT, 2016
- Layers, Group Show with Land Marks, 10th Avenue Art Gallery, 2015
- Art Makes Change, Vision LA, CLimate Action Arts Festival, Bergamot Station, Los Angeles, CA, 2015
- Grossmont College Faculty Shows, 2010 - 2013
- 13th Annual Juried Exhibit, 3rd Place, Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, 2004.
- Pinhole Magic, 2 Person Exhibit, The Photographer’s Gallery, 2004.
- Imparting Grace, Group Exhibit, Boehm Gallery, Palomar College, 2003.
- Why Pinhole? Juried Exhibit, Visual Studies Workshop, New York, 2000.
- DisPlays of Nature, San Diego Art Institute, 1988
All images copyright Louise Russell