Description

Trident Gallery is pleased to present ''Pale Shadows: Cameraless Images by Pamela Ellis Hawkes,'' an exhibition of cyanotypes, tintypes, and pigment prints captured without a camera. Inspired by flickering shadows on her studio walls and by the earliest works of photography, made in the 1830s by inventor Henry Fox Talbot, who aspired to ''fix a shadow'' onto paper, Hawkes experiments with the cyanotype process to make photograms, images made by placing objects directly in contact with light-sensitive paper. In so doing, Hawkes joins other important contemporary photographers who have returned to ''historical'' or ''alternative'' photographic processes to refresh and develop their artistic visions. Hawkes' vision questions the perceived realities within photographs; explores the elusive points of contact between reality, memory, and imagination; and participates in the ageless calling of artists to preserve and honor the ephemeral, to fix fleeting shadows and transmute loss into beauty.