Kyra Schmidt

Born in Indiana, Kyra Schmidt is a visual artist currently based in Roanoke, Virginia. She received her Bachelors in Art at the University of Southern Indiana, and her M.F.A. in Photography from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Kyra is presently undergoing curatorial studies and instructing workshops at the Taubman Museum of Art. Kyra has exhibited work both nationally and internationally with notable features in China’s Lishui Photography Festival, Cortona on the Move, and Critical Mass Top 50. Her artistic work examines the condition of contemporary perception with emphasis given to the representation, reception and absorption of physical experience. She works with both analog and digital photographic processes to transcribe imagery from performances in the landscape. Kyra’s work is deeply rooted in an interest in the ontology of the photographic medium, in the philosophy of aesthetics, and in the belief that the elimination of a sovereign point of view is a key element in preserving photography as a space for civil transformation.


Water Study, Ennis Lake, Ennis, Montana (11.2016, dipped in lake water)


Algae, Shawnee National Forrest, Illinois (06.2017, pulled through algae, unfixed)


Water Study, Tybee Island, Georgia (exposed over 14 hours, fixed)

Transcriptions

Transcriptions presents images from experiences with and within nature. It the photographic medium as the message, to reframe the systems we use to know the earth. In a search for rootedness, Transcriptions engages directly with various environments by bringing light-sensitive materials into immediate contact with nature, physically touching paper to soil, water, or plant material. This work situates the return to camera-less imagery, a current trend in contemporary art, as a valuable way to connect a photograph’s meaning and appearance with its technique and subject matter. The resulting photographic lumen prints are passageways through which the transcriptions are carried across; they are evidence of a vision beyond what the eye can see.

Transcriptions makes tangible artifacts of a silent event in the land. The images in this body of work are not conceptual in nature, instead they are registered through physical means. Sometimes, the prints are superimposed into images of the landscape in which they were created to ground them within their origin. Other times the camera-less images are left without an anchor to examine the material and imaginative basis of photographic experience. Here, images created in and of the landscape offer a raw, primal, and rooted aesthetic experience of place. They set up a world to create occasions for the recognition of beauty. Transcriptions asks the viewer to consider what can be learned from the world through direct physical contact with it, and what such a connection with the world may reveal about ourselves.


Sulfur, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming (07.2016, fixed)


Sea Foam, Jekyll Island, Georgia (07.2017, pressed into sea foam, unfixed)


Ennis, Montana (11.2016, dipped in pond, fixed)


Algae, The Landings, Georgia #3 (02.2017, pulled through algae, half fixed)


Algae, The Landings, Georgia #5 (04.2018, pulled through algae, exposed for 1 month, unfixed)


Cyanotpye, Tybee Island, Georgia (01.2017)


Basin and Range, Idaho (07.2016, sand, dust, dirt mediation)


Algae, The Landings, Georgia #4 (05.2018, pulled through algae, exposed for 1 month, unfixed)


Gallatin River, Manhattan, Montana (03.2017, placed in riverbed, unfixed)


Sea Foam, Jekyll Island, Georgia (09.2017, imprints of sea foam, unfixed)


Sea Foam, Jekyll Island, Georgia #2 (09.2017, imprints of sea foam, unfixed)


Water Study, Ennis Lake, Ennis, Montana (11.2016, imprint of current, fixed)


Frog, Shawnee National Forrest, Illinois (06.2017, floated in pond, unfixed)


Cyanotype, Emerald Lake, Montana (07.2016)


Tybee Island, Georgia (02.2017, floated in box in tide, unfixed)


Tybee Island, Georgia after 3 months (02.2017, floated in box in tide, unfixed)


Rat Lake, Montana (04.2016, water study, exposed in 5 second increments, half fixed)

To view more of Kyra Schmidt’s work please visit their website.


 

Details :

8.25″x10.75″, 256 pages,
Perfect Bound
Edition Size 1500
ISBN : 978-1-944005-18-4
Printed in the Netherlands

Introduction by : The Editors

Guest Curators and Interviews by :

Alan Rothschild
Amy Elkins
Anna Skillman
Heavy Collective
Jennifer Murray
Kris Graves
Michael Itkoff
Paloma Shutes
Paul Kopeikin
Rachel Reese
Robert Lyons
Small Talk Collective
Susan Laney
Zemie Barr

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