August 24, 2004
Paring Poems With Pictures
I try to focus
on today and then tonight.
But I can’t forget
two planes,
two towers,
and a tomb.
And I wonder,
too often,
about tomorrow.
Poem by Otto Selles
“Perspective”
"re/construct" will be at the South Haven Center for the Arts through September 19.
Read Jennifer Steensma Hoag's "Notes on re/construct" by clicking on the Continue reading "Paring Poems With Pictures" link below.
New work in the Terra Incognita series by Jennifer Steensma Hoag
Grand Rapids photographer Jennifer Steensma Hoag says she left her photographs untitled because the objects are supposed to be ambiguous. “These are found installations that I made into art.”
The photos document human alterations to the landscape. She says she is interested in the intersection of human constructions with a natural landscape. Although they are not intrinsically beautiful, she considers the subjects to be beautiful through the composition, design and craft.
She took the photographs with a twin lens Rolleiflex camera made in the 1940s. She then altered the photos slightly with a digital program, digitally exposed them and then printed them on photographic paper.
Otto Selles, a poet who is a Professor of French at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, wrote poetry to accompany the photographs in this exhibition. The title, “re/construct, applies to the photographs themselves and to the pairing of the poems with the pictures.
“The viewer has to re/construct the photo as he looks at it and re/construct it when he reads the poem that goes with it,” says Steensma Hoag.
Posted by South Haven Center for the Arts at August 24, 2004 11:40 AM