Lisa Elmaleh

  • PROJECTS
    • American Folk
    • Everglades
    • The Lightness and the Dark
    • Rooted
    • Lonesome Valley
    • The Daily Self Portrait
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lisaelmaleh@gmail.com
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 Matted Brambles, New Jersey, 2008
Matted Brambles, New Jersey, 2008
 Brush, South Dakota, 2008
Brush, South Dakota, 2008
 Tree in Field with Flowers, Wisconsin, 2008
Tree in Field with Flowers, Wisconsin, 2008
 Marsh Grasses, New Jersey, 2008
Marsh Grasses, New Jersey, 2008
 Overgrowth, Georgia, 2008
Overgrowth, Georgia, 2008
 Bridge, Georgia, 2008
Bridge, Georgia, 2008
 Tangled Tree Limbs, Louisiana, 2008
Tangled Tree Limbs, Louisiana, 2008
 Marsh Grass and Trees, New Jersey, 2008
Marsh Grass and Trees, New Jersey, 2008
Project Statement

The keys to my first car were a means of escape. I was free to drive to the ends of the earth, to be alone in nature. This need to be isolated in nature seemed a primal instinct. Since my late teens, I have been taking solitary road trips, seeking to lose myself along back roads, and finding comfort in the ability to find myself lost. “It is a surprising and memorable, as well as valuable, experience to be lost in the woods any time,” wrote Thoreau, “…and not till we are completely lost, or turned round, - for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost,-do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature.”

For the series Rooted, I made images using the wet collodion process, a nineteenth century process that requires the image be exposed and developed on site. The collodion process renders light slowly, and reveals the passing of time. I took to the road with my 8x10 camera and a portable darkroom in search of familiarity in the unfamiliar landscape of rural America. I traveled from east to west, in the spirit of the original landscape photographers of the American west, but as a contemporary woman, with a vehicle, in the much impacted landscape of modern times. Each photograph engages the viewer in a dialogue between the equal and opposite elements in nature. The title Rooted is, in itself, a paradox. My pilgrimage uproots me, but I find myself grounded in the familiar strangeness of nature.

© 2018 Lisa Elmaleh via Visura
Lisa Elmaleh Photography
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