| Names: | | | Dates: | 1941 - | | Born: | US, MA, Boston | | Active: | US |
American photographer with a long career of still-life work. She has produced several remarkable books including ‘Signs of Life‘, ‘Under the Looking Glass‘ with photographic collages and ‘Weighing the Planets‘.Preparing biographies
Biography provided by Focal Press
Educated at Wellesley in art history (BA, 1963), Parker was self-taught as a photographer in 1970 after experimentation with painting. Most of her work has been close-ups (tombstone carvings), studio constructions, and arrangements using an assortment of objects, old engravings, and cast shadows. Making large-format contact prints from 4 x 5 through 8 x 10 negatives, one of Parker’s particular stylistic traits has been a luscious split tone of cooler grays with eggplant purples (selenium toned gelatin silver prints). Compositions include floral subjects, fruit, and prisms, as well as old iron hardware and figurative elements such as small reproductions of classical busts. Objects and their arranged juxtapositions take on a new context of meaning that may hint at a multitude of intellectual interpretations. Her work offers up influences from Joseph Cornell and Frederick Sommer. Parker, in her artist statements, is quite forthcoming in listing her interests, yet she resists any direct suggestion of what her visual work may be about. A general theme for her photographs could be a mapping for understanding the unknown; a specific concern would be the emancipation of anima motrix — the spirit found inside special objects when they are aligned beneath the alchemist’s illumination. One of her books, Under the Looking Glass (1983), features color images. She has also worked with the Polaroid 20 x 24 camera.
(Author: Ken White - Rochester Institute of Technology)
Michael Peres (Editor-in-Chief), 2007, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography, 4th edition, (Focal Press) [ISBN-10: 0240807405, ISBN-13: 978-0240807409]
(Used with permission)
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| | Portraits
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| Getty Research, Los Angeles, USA has an ULAN (Union List of Artists Names Online) entry for this photographer. This is useful for checking names and they frequently provide a brief biography. | | Go to website |
Olivia Parker
https://www.johnpaulcaponigro.com ...
Interview by John Paul Caponigro as a part of his Artists on Art series (www.johnpaulcaponigro.com/lib/artists/index.php)
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