A Door into the Dark
For her exhibit at Bunnell Street Arts Center this month, Homer photographer Lauren Semivan quotes writer Rebecca Solnit,
“Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.” – Rebecca Solnit, A field Guide to Getting Lost
Semivan adds, “My relationship to photography is essentially a relationship to continuous questioning about the world and my own experiences.”
“Artists, like physicists, are people who spend their lives trying to understand not only the nature of the physical world but its underlying systems of cause and effect, which have a way of running counter to the visible. We measure and synthesize our experiences, but we record them differently.” Michael Cunningham, Dark Matter, from “Barbara Ess: I am Not This Body”
The idea of the hidden or invisible is central to my work. I cannot see what I am making until I see a negative. I have a feeling, a hunch about something that I am looking for and I follow intuition.”
Semivan’s work resides in the collections of the Nelson Atkins Museum, Cranbrook Art Museum, and the Wriston Art Center at Lawrence University, and has been featured in Wall Street International Magazine, the New Yorker, Artforum, and Photograph magazine. Semivan lives and works in Homer, Alaska. She is represented by Benrubi Gallery in New York, and David Klein Gallery in Detroit, Michigan.