My recent work Paper Dolls forms part of an ongoing series of constructed large format photographic still lives incorporating portraiture and self-portraiture. I begin the image making process by collaborating with friends and family members to make the figures for my subsequent constructions. I might use masks, old clothes or costumes as appropriate. I like setting up improvisational situations with an element of play. Indeed, paper dolls were part of my childhood play of fantasy and social exploration and I engage with that fiction. The figures produced are then selected, processed in the darkroom and cut out. I place these homemade ‘dolls’ in relationship with other objects in the studio or garden to create an imaginary space, making a tactile ‘playground’ full of associations with remembered fragments of myth, folk-tale and real life. This staging is not merely theatrical but seeks to draw attention to the layers of photographic reality.
In the first full-scale exhibition of this work at the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland, my images were in the same room as ‘Frances and Elsie Wright’s hoax photographs of the ‘Cottingley Fairies’, from the archive of the National Museum of Photography in Bradford. Working with cut out dolls of friends and family, in the manner of the Wright sisters, allows me to address historical pictorial conventions and photography’s relation to time and memory. It becomes a way for me to anchor the shifting past of memory to a more physical process in the here and now and connects the private domain of everyday events and significant incidents to the more public space of the collective mythology of fairy tales. I use change of scale and the juxtaposition of objects to cause a collision between different realms, giving access to the unconscious. This throws light on domestic social dynamics between parent and child, male and female, youth and age. In retrospect I realise that this work coincides with looking after my grandchildren, finding my way into a lost world. The fantasy of childhood play becomes mingled with a new awareness of innocence and fragility, being tiny in a big world, trying to find your place in it, and discovering how memory shifts with age.
I photograph my still life constructions using large format 4×5 color film, which I then scan and balance digitally to print on archival 24”x30” water-colour ink jet paper. This scale brings the dolls to their actual size and reveals the full range of detail present. I do all printing in my studio using an individually profiled Epson 7600 with Ultrachrome pigment inks, which are capable of reproducing the subtlest of tones and are truly archival, and Hahnemuhle heavy weight acid free cotton rag paper to make a ‘permanent pigmented print’.
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Karen Melvin was born in Detroit, U.S.A., gained B.A. Hons. In Fine Art from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was a Northern Arts adviser on photography three times. She lectured in photography at Cleveland College of Art and Design, Middlesbrough until 1998, and is a visiting lecturer in Photography at University of Sunderland.
She was chosen to be part of the Great North Art Affair resulting in an exhibition at Flowers East Gallery, London in 2005. She was given an Arts Council England, North East photography production grant for Paper Dolls in 2004 and a two-year Mentoring Scheme award in 2002. She was photographer in residence for the Middlesbrough 2000 Millennium Festival resulting in an artist’s book and touring exhibition opening at the Millennium Dome, London.
Recent solo exhibitions include Paper Dolls, Myles Meehan Gallery, Darlington, 2005, Queens Hall, Hexham, 2005, and MAC Centre, Birmingham, 2004; Constellation, The Gallery, Gateshead Library, 2002, and MAC Centre, Birmingham, 2004; and All Heaven and Earth, Tom Blau Gallery, London, 2001.
Group exhibitions include Borealis, at Flowers East Gallery, London, 2005; Thinking the Unthinkable, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland, 2005; The Unlimited Dream Company, curated by Alistair Robinson for The Biscuit Factory, Newcastle, 2005; …some food for thought, Queen’s Hall Gallery, Hexham, 2005; new new, old old, Kent Gallery, Key West, Florida, U.S.A., 2005; Dialogue with the Environment, Chapel Gallery, Ormskirk, 2003; 2000 Print Auction, Houston Center for Photography, Texas; and Pride, the Millennium Dome, London and tour.
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