This Is Your Valley & Other Works, The Art of LisaAnn LoBasso. September 2013.

This Is Your Valley & Other Works, The Art of LisaAnn LoBasso

NX ArtHouse September 2013

Artist Statement by LisaAnn LoBasso:

Darkroom. Dodge. Burn. Spot tone. When I began in photography, the final phases were controlled in the darkroom. Most photographers found this a tedious process. I found solace in the hours upon hours of dim red light. I could stay in the chemical room for days, unaware if it was day or night, preferring to pull off my gloves and feel the print and it emerged in the liquid. It was a unique space with a peaceful feeling. Others would come and go.

In the end, I would have stacks of prints, only one being the "perfect" final copy. I didn't care that the chemicals were damaging my weak lungs or eating my skin. Shooting was its own game, quite different. Most photographers felt in their element shooting, rather than developing. These photographers were strong technically. The technical language was something I could feel but never able to memorize. I found strength in my technical mistakes, the act of "seeing", the photographer's good eye.

I never called myself a photographer, only an artist, using the medium.

Today there are no darkrooms. Photographer's use computer programs like Photoshop or Lightroom. It is a healthier option. We can save the final "perfect" version and make multiple copies easily if we choose. There is no solace in this process.

As an artist I find printing on to other formats intriguing, such as these dangling acetates, that allow the light to shine through the subtle colors and text. I enjoy the different textures, crumbling the prints, adding decoupage, sewing partial images to make one. I am captured by the mistakes of shooting at the wrong speed or surprised by the turnout of expired film. It is the process that arrests me.

This Is Your Valley is a series developed about our valley. Filled with dust. It is about the pain in this valley. It is about the beauty in this valley. The struggle in this valley. The naked truth of the valley.

This Is Your Valley was completed 2 1/2 years ago. The nX hosts the first solo exhibit that exposes them. I have not shot or written since.

Except this wedding photography you see. Another artist, a dancer, forced me to shoot her wedding. I was never interested in commercial work until three years ago. Wedding photography has made drastic changes and now the wedding photographer captures moments more often than stiff portraits. I was just embarking on the idea of a business in photography, tied to my fine arts background, but halted as life changes absorbed me. These images of love, as the two are committed together, were created at the beginning of my divorce.

I do not feel like an artist today. After over 20 years, I am uncomfortable behind the lense, the pen, the mic. I do not shoot or write now. But hope to one day find a process again.