Studio 208
Rebekah Burgess
Rebekah Burgess
Medium: Photography
Artist Statement:
I am a Photographic Historian and Photographer who integrates archival images and vintage photo processes into my own photographic practice, with a focus on time and environmental issues in my ongoing work. I am currently focused on working with Cyanotypes (better known as Sun Prints or Photograms).
Sun printing is one of the oldest and most direct photographic methods. It involves placing an object on a piece of paper that is hand-painted with emulsion, then allowing the sun to create a silhouette of that object on the photo-sensitive paper. Any encounter with water stops the exposure.
Cyanotype is one of the rare camera-less photographic processes. By taking away the camera, we directly encounter a tactile authenticity that is missing from a 2D negative. Cyanotypes texturally mirror their environment, always in deep blue hues dependent on the sun’s rays. Colors are also created by natural elements, including water, salt, mustard seed, turmeric, or paprika, echoing the colors of the earth. A photograph reproduces an object on an image, but a sun print takes in the elements-such as heat, humidity or wind– and emits traces of those elements onto the paper.
Professionally I work as Collections Manager/ Registrar of Lehigh University Art Galleries (LUAG), with previous work experience in the collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
