My Artist

Jerry Uelsmann
Born in Detroit Michigan in 1934. Graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology and Indiana University, he was a professor at the University of Florida for nearly three decades. He now resides in Gainesville, Florida.

Before the birth of photoshop, Uelsmann was making complex montages with multiple negatives and up to sometimes a dozen enlargers at a time to produce his final images. His images are dream-like and leave the viewer responsible for creating their own meaning in the work.

Uelsmann is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, a founding member of the Society for Photographic Education, and a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain. He has had over 100 solo exhibitions and 10 books published. His photographs are in the permanent collections of museums such as, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and London, and the Bibliotheque nationale in Paris.

I have been drawn to Uelsmann's work for years because of the dream-like quality, but also for the archetypal symbols used in his work. Many of his images remind me of dreams I've had as well as periods in my life. The photograph I have attached is titled, Undiscovered Self, 1999. This piece resonates a lot with me. Right now in my life I am working to discover myself as an artist, as a woman, as an adult and find this image to capture that duality I feel constantly in my life. The dark and the light, the masculine and the feminine, the good girl and the bad girl. Maybe it is just the fact that I am a Gemini and am always thinking dually, or maybe it is the true nature of all of us that there is always the other who is present in our selves.