Back in 2000, just after I had started collecting photography, I went to my second ever photo collecting show called Photo LA in Los Angeles. I was very green and pretty clueless about photography. I went into one of the booths--the Gomez Gallery (no longer in business) because I was drawn to one of the images on the wall. The woman in the booth asked me if I wanted to look at "the work". I said sure and she brought out a big black portfoliio box filled with large black and white nudes shot in water. They were extraordinary and some so abstract that you couldn't tell what body part you were looking at. With each print she told me amazing background and stories and after a while I'm thinking to myself "man this women knows a scary amount about this artists' work" Finally I had to ask--"how is it that you know so much about this artist?" "I am the artist" she said with a wry smile. This was my introduction to Baltimore based artist Connie Imboden Connie has been exploring this nexus of light, water, flesh, reflection, and emotion for 30+ years. Much of the work is shot in her own black bottom swimming pool in her back yard. I bought this extraordinary image, Dead Silences 1 (1988) that day.
After I got it framed I saw in vertically and I was so entranced that I put two picture hanging wires on the back so I could hang it in either orientation. It is completely different image! I asked Connie about it and she said she does that with several of her images.
Fast forward 11 years. I get a call from a photographer I know, Barbara Tyroler telling me her friend Connie Imboden was coming to the area to participate in a show at the FRANK Gallery in Chapel Hill and give a lecture at Through This Lens Gallery in Durham. She asked if she could bring Connie by to see Cassilhaus and reconnect. I was thrilled. We had such a wonderful visit.
(Barbara, me, and Connie)
Connie's talk was very illuminating and well attended-a fabulous visit all around.
(Roylee Duvall-proprietor of Through this Lens, me, photograher Bill McAllister, Connie, photographer Caroline Vaughan) Photo courtesy of Kay Chernush. Spend some time on Connie's website. It is a fascinating body of work.
The cure for anything is salt water--sweat, tears, or the sea. Isak Dinesen
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