By Hand: Photographs by Caroline Tallmadge

The Solo Series of 2012 begins tomorrow with the opening of my show, By Hand. I hope anyone in Ottawa will be able to come and see it!

This show will also include the very first set of Call and Response that is a response to the work of a SPAO third year. I got a chance to see the poems yesterday for the first time and I am very excited about them.

Hope to see you all tomorrow night – stop by anytime between 6 and 9, or anytime until March 12th.

By Hand, a series of photographs by Caroline Tallmadge, is a study in macro photography of the stunning miniature world of the objects of the trades. This is the first exhibition of the 2012 Solo Series in the Red Wall Gallery.

The intersection of people with cultures has always fascinated Tallmadge. A project documenting Mexican migrant farm workers emerged from her first year at SPAO, while her second year involved a more prolonged photographic study of the Amish culture of northern New York State. These explorations have led Tallmadge to her most recent series: photographing materials, tools, and hand made objects at close range to explore the relationship that a manual worker has with his or her materials and tools.

“Using a bellows on a medium format camera, I photographed materials, tools and handmade products at very close range. I discovered the texture of brown paper as it is used to make patterns in a dressmaker’s studio. I saw the beautiful complexity of the inner workings of mechanical clocks in the jewelry and clock repair shop. I grew able to identify the grades of coarseness of Russian horsehair used in making bows for stringed instruments. I captured the visual, viscous glory of glue as it is used by a bookbinder.”

With her use of macro photography, Tallmadge creates extraordinary images of ordinary objects; from the dressmaker’s pins to the miniature gears of a clock repair shop, these images create an intimate and unexpected portrait of the everyday objects of the manual worker.