Project Statement:
Why do I make landscapes? The answer is twofold. In part, I make them because the outside world always seemed less dangerous than the inside world of my childhood. If I ever felt safe, it was outside. And partially, it’s because my grandmother created landscapes of a sort – beautiful flower arrangements – that captured my young imagination.
Tension and strife were constants in my family life as a child. To escape the discord, I would just go outside. In the local woods and parks I found peace, something I rarely found at home.
I also make landscapes because of my grandmother, a skilled practitioner of Japanese Ikebana flower arranging. As a child, I was completely captivated by the Asian art in my grandmother’s home, and by her flower arrangements. The combination of flowers, branches, leaves, and rocks that she used to create her “landscapes” somehow made sense to me. And her use of line, shape, pattern, texture, color, symmetry and asymmetry mesmerized me.
I believe the combination of these forces in my life compelled me to become the landscape photographer that I am today.
Artist Bio:
Marky Kauffmann has been working as a fine art photographer, educator, and curator for thirty years. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2017 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist’s Fellowship in Photography. Recently, she won First Place in Soho Photo Gallery’s National Alternative Processes Competition, and was a finalist in the 7th Edition Julia Margaret Cameron Worldwide Gala Awards.
Kauffmann has been a guest curator at several Boston-area school galleries. Her first curatorial endeavor, Beyond Mothers and Children: New Feminist Photographers, featured the images of six women photographers working on issues surrounding the lives of women and girls. Last year she helped curate Veiled Rebellion, an exhibit featuring the work of Pulitzer Prize winning photographer, Lynsey Addario, at Milton Academy’s Nesto Gallery. Kauffmann’s traveling exhibit, Outspoken: Seven Women Photographers is currently on display at the Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts.
Kauffmann is a passionate educator who has taught photography at numerous secondary schools, including Milton Academy. She also spent twenty years teaching adults as part of the New England School of Photography’s Evening Workshop Program.
Kauffmann utilizes traditional darkroom techniques, alternative processes, and digital technologies to create her unique images.
