Migrating
Edition of 100Hahnemuhle Fine Art Paper
8x10", 11x14", and 16x20"
For more than ten years Kate MacDonnell has been making photographs from her travels through this sometimes sparkly and sometimes dull existence. Both the effervescent and the flat are photographed with a sense of awe. Her daily practice has also involved a diaristic approach to image making by taking a photograph at 7:15 every day of 2008. These images are posted online as a collaborative effort with a community of 5 other artists at www.sametime715.com. This project was highlighted on NPR's Morning Edition. Kate was also recently featured on LarissaLeclair.com.
MacDonnell is represented by Civilian Art Projects were she had her first solo show in the spring of 2008. She has been awarded an Artist Fellowship Grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, a Young Artists Program Grant and has work included in the DC Commission's Art Bank. Her work is also held in private collections and has been exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Center for Photography at Woodstock and the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. Her work has been published in The Photo Review and Photography Quarterly.
She has been a visiting artist at the George Washington University, Virginia Commonwealth University, Edinboro University, Allegheny College and the Corcoran College of Art and Design; and was Artist in Residence at St. Mary's College of Maryland. She holds a BFA from the Corcoran College of Art and Design. She lives and works in Washington, DC.
ABOUT THE PIECE:
At the time and kind of always I was thinking a lot about flight, about travel -always with my camera close at hand for moments that present some sort of resonance. This sunset in the fall of 2006 observed at a farm party in rural Virginia with a line up of somewhere around 10 bands feels like a 70s rock album cover and reminds me of that feeling had by those of us that saw the sun glowing and the birds in a line stretching from one side of the horizon to the other as the bands were warming up behind us. The moment was both instant nostalgia and anticipation. What I also love about this photo is the way that the camera recorded this image, the digital lens flare that makes a perfect circle rather than the shape of the aperture as well as the birds disappearing in the brightness of the sun and the inverted image of the sun floating just below and to the left of the sun itself make the image transcend the bucolic pastoral romantic image of sunset over rolling hills and speaks to a certain way the camera was able to interpret an optical event. Using an early model DSLR I was interested in employing these "kinks" of digital capture to call attention to the fact that the image is not a clear window onto another reality it is a photographic image that is told in photographic terms. At the time that meant that if you shoot into bright light the sensor in the camera would freak out a little bit and translate the information in a way unlike optical/mechanical cameras.