Pam Nelson Pam Nelson
After taking a course in Photojournalism in 1974, my interest in photography surpassed my interest in the other Fine Arts media. I have worked in both black-and-white and color photography and have experimented with various techniques and methods. Searching for new imagery led me to experiment with computer-generated and computer-manipulated images.
At present, my work merges photography with video technology. I place my photographs on a copy board, transfer the image into a computer, alter it, and then photograph the final image on the video monitor. The images that I use cannot be transferred to video tape because the processes themselves are outside the parameters of what the tape will record: additive feedback and other technical limitations of the equipment itself to achieve unique images. Thus, when I create an image I like, I photograph it-- after it leaves the screen, it cannot be retrieved. The resulting images are displayed as slides or printed as Cibachromes. I make sequences or series of related images which are entirely my own creation. These may be framed as a single image, triptichs, or in combinations of five to nine images.
I want to explore the nature of photography by freeing the image from existing subjects-- to explore the function and capability of photography as non-representational art rather than as a documentary tool. I find that using the video computer to alter my pre-existing images frees my visual imagination in ways that no other medium has. By merging photography with video technology, I can control the subject-- its color, shape, size, aspect, and proportion: the entirety of its presentation. And I can control light-something straight photography cannot do. In this way I can make the subject entirely what I want.
Duane Michals has said that photography will not challenge painting and sculpture as serious art until it can free itself from being a process of recognition and become a truly creative one. I am trying to eliminate dependence upon existing sources for images and move toward altering images and creating images directly. In this way, I am attempting to re-evaluate the nature and expectations of photography.
Listen to Pam Nelson's sound file. (242K)
To the Artists Index
