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Project
Competition
Juror's Choice
Selected by Susan Smith,
National Geographic
Jessica Todd Harper,
Wynnewood, PA
This is an ongoing project about my family and friends in their
homes. Over the years, I have been influenced by many artists who use
the domestic sphere- Mary Cassatt, Vermeer, Andrew Wyeth, Emmet Gowin
and Sally Mann to name a few. I am interested in how people are in their
private spaces, and often more specifically, in their private worlds.
The figures in my work are depicted both alone and in groups, but my emphasis
is on their individual experiences. No one is ever doing anything; all
the activity is internal. This quiet/active quality is something I particularly
admire about the Dutch painters who could at once make a pretty bowl of
fruit and a metaphor for the beauty and tragedy of the human experience.
My pictures rely on intimacy and specificity to touch on the grander narratives
of identity, familial relationships and being alive.
I use either a Mamiya 7 or a Hasselblad with medium format film, generally
shot at long exposures. The film is then scanned into Photoshop files
which I sometimes adjust in minor ways before they are printed with archival
pigmented
inks onto paper. The rectangular prints are 32” x 40”; the
squares are 35” x 35”.
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All images © Jessica Todd Harper
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