BETSY GREEN, A SHORT BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY
As an artist I use historical photographic technologies. My work explores landscape, particularly in remote areas of the world, and focused on my passion for exceptional trees and natural formations.
I use a nineteenth century portable glass plate field camera to realize large-scale, cinematic format photographs. In a contemporary manner my large-scale pictures reflect on the nineteenth century romantic landscape tradition, and grand salon painting.
My interest in photography began while I was studying at the Rhode Island School of Design, where I was taught by Henry Horenstein. The photographic departmentʼs legacy included Harry Callahan, Minor White, and Aaron Siskind; all forerunners in the struggle of photography to be accepted as art.
During my post-graduate degree at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, the Netherlands, I began combining my painting and photographic interests into one medium by researching the idea of transforming silver gelatin photographic images, using historical chemical recipes. I made my first camera obscura while studying at the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst in Basel, Switzerland.
In the past 20 years, I have developed a singularly personal interpretation of landscape through experimenting with analog color negative film. By using reflection and absorption of light, and long exposures I influence the color dyes within film, creating an enhanced painterly language within the medium itself.
My work holds fast to the origins of photography and its materials. More than ever I feel the strength of my commitment to explore, expand and deepen photography as an art form.
- Betsy Green
