The Griffin Museum of Photography is pleased to have photographer and printmaker Vaune Trachtman for an in-person artist talk and book signing. Join us on Saturday, May 2, at 2 pm in our Main Gallery to learn about Trachtman's recently released photo book, NOW IS ALWAYS, published by Tusen Takk Press. Signed copies will be available for purchase.
© Vaune Trachtman© Vaune Trachtman© Vaune Trachtman© Vaune Trachtman©Vaune Trachtman, Vaune Trachtman holding the Collector's Edition of NOW IS ALWAYS in her studio.
About NOW IS ALWAYS
My parents died when I was young -- my father when I was five and my mother when I was 15. After that, I was rarely in one place for very long, but photography always helped keep me rooted and stable. It's taken me a long time to understand that much of my work has been a constant, usually unconscious exploration and evocation of what it feels like to have lost them at such an early age. We all have our particular circumstances in life, of course. I think mine are at the heart of what leads me to photograph liminal, dreamlike spaces, to combine my father's 1930's negatives with my own images, and to explore mark-making and text.
I think that's also part of the reason I'm interested in the non-toxic direct-to-plate photopolymer gravure process. I'm always on the lookout for moments that contain something larger than themselves; the picture I want to make is of an instant in time that is full of other times. The DTP method helps me feel like I'm doing that. I love that I can achieve the tonal richness of the earliest gravures without their toxicity, and that I can conjure up the early chemists of photography and have a conversation with them about what photography can be. I also love that this process requires physical effort--the rubbing of plates, the turning of the press--and that working with paper and ink is tactile and elemental.
In my work, I want to create a feeling of collapsed-yet-expanded time. I want the viewer to look at the past, and I want the past to look right back. I want the viewer and the subject to each feel the gaze of the other. And by working with archival images and handwriting, I also want to integrate layers of technology and image-making history. I want to feel like I'm not only drawing with light, I'm drawing with time.
© Vaune Trachtman© Vaune Trachtman© Vaune Trachtman© Vaune Trachtman, Trestle© Vaune Trachtman, Tenenment Roof #1© Vaune Trachtman, Cycle© Vaune Trachtman, Reverie© Vaune Trachtman, Skull© Vaune Trachtman, Strand (detail of tryptic)
©Vaune Trachtman, Vaune Trachtman holding the Collector's Edition of NOW IS ALWAYS in her studio.
Vaune Trachtman is a photographer and printmaker whose work honors historic processes while avoiding toxic chemicals. Formerly a master printer of silver-gelatin prints and asphaltum-based photogravures, she began to feel that her immune system was being compromised by those processes. She now makes gravures with little more than light and water. Her images explore the evanescence of dreams and memory, resulting in a fleeting, wondrous, sacred habitation (Od Review) and works that seem more like emanations than photographs (Boston Globe).
Work from her series NOW IS ALWAYS led to her selection for the Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50, and her printmaking earned the Olcott Family Award in The Print Center's 97th ANNUAL International Competition. NOW IS ALWAYS was also named a Top Portfolio by Rfotofolio and an Outstanding Work by the Denis Roussel Awards. Its creation was supported by the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. She has had solo shows at the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Vermont Center for Photography, and Deerfield Academy.
Vaune was born in Philadelphia and now lives in Brattleboro, Vermont. She received her BA from Marlboro College and her MA from New York University and the International Center for Photography. Her studio is in an old textile mill overlooking the Connecticut River.
Instagram: @vaune.art
67 Shore Road
Winchester, MA 01890
United States