RUTH DUDLEY-CARR | “WHAT REMAINS…”
Thanks Ruth for sending us some images from her newly made landscapes taken in South Dakota, Michigan, Maine, and Massachusetts. As she wrote «I am using the landscape as a surrogate for self. There is a cataract quality, a solemn chroma, and a patina that is disintegrating, which is an attempt at forcing the viewer to find a place that is not an exact geographic location but an emotional location».
Ruth Dudley-Carr is a photographer that works in a variety of ways, including digitally and in the darkroom. She holds a BA in Theatre Production from Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan and worked as a scenic artist for many years before finding her opportunity to speak through a lens. Ruth completed the Professional Certificate Program at Maine Media College in Rockport, ME in May 2011. Ruth uses the camera to discuss the many aspects of her life and to address the concerns that she feels most people can relate to in regards to sexuality, love, the destruction of emotion, and the exploration of self. She wrote on her artist Statement «My work functions as a burrow of memory, both past and present, of realities, imbued creation, or both. It is an invitation for the viewer to explore still frames of my mind, in coded references. These expressive situations are possible when autobiography and fiction begin to blend in confusion.
I have created situations of emotional weight, where mood is implied through color and light. Repressed expression and symbolic gesture are further vehicles that I apply. This is an exploration of the consequences of sexuality, love, and the confusing boundaries that push the line between fiction and reality, either remembered from my past or dreamt in moments. The work explores the human form as a potent commodity to be used and consumed but also appreciated. At times this may be viewed as a voyeuristic language, though this approach has other vagaries for the viewer.
I used the power of self-portrait to reveal the true self, removing the masks and everyday persona I feel obligated to show. This is my chance to breathe and settle in to who I really am, or what has really happened in my past- an opportunity to view my true self/identity. The voyeuristic approach, described with scrims, lack of focus, and unusual tones, forces a visceral reaction. This work helps me to release the tormented dreams of the reality I once lived. This is my visual diary, seedy with passion and love, or the implication of what might occur when you are trapped between these worlds. I look at the discrepancy of who I was and who I am and how those worlds live together, the many facets of an individual and I fight them all.
This is my visual language to describe confusion when compared to love, and to intensify within the dilution of feelings that might exist within relationships, including those relationships with ourselves».
© All copyright Ruth Dudley-Carr