Anne Arden McDonald is a Brooklyn and Kingston based artist who made photographic self portraits from age 15 to 30, and published a book of this work in 2004. Recently she has been making process-inspired images.
McDonald’s work has been exhibited widely: in the past 24 years, she has had 44 solo exhibitions in 10 countries (about 230 total shows) and has been published in over 215 places in 20 countries, including in Aperture and European Photography. Her work is in the collections of 6 museums, including The Houston MFA, Denver Art Museum, Detroit Art Institute, and the Bibliothque Nationale.
"This series explores ways of generating images on photographic paper without using cameras or negatives. While still working with photopaper, light, and chemistry, I use well-known processes like the photogram, and experiment to invent other ways of producing images. The methods are an unorthodox collection of materials and techniques from domestic and scientific realms brought into the darkroom. The imagery emerges as circles and spheres, representing planets and atoms, visualizing the macrocosm and the microcosm of life. The scale often has a relationship to abstract expressionist painting; I am in the piece while building it, exploring it like a terrain."