Vaune Trachtman: NOW IS ALWAYS — Artist Talk & Book Signing

@ The Griffin Museum of Photography is pleased to have photographer and printmaker Vaune Trachtman for an in-person artist talk and book signing. Join us on Saturday, May 2, at 2 pm in our Main Gallery to learn about Trachtman’s recently released photo book, NOW IS ALWAYS, published by Tusen Takk Press. Signed copies will be available for purchase. © Vaune Trachtman © Vaune Trachtman © Vaune Trachtman © Vaune Trachtman ©Vaune Trachtman, Vaune Trachtman holding the Collector’s Edition of NOW IS ALWAYS in her studio. About NOW IS ALWAYS My parents died when I was young — my father when I was five and my mother when I was 15. After that, I was rarely in one place for very long, but photography always helped keep me rooted and stable. It’s taken me a long time to understand that much of my work has been a constant, usually unconscious exploration and evocation of what it feels like to have lost them at such an early age. We all have our particular circumstances in life, of course. I think mine are at the heart of what leads me to photograph liminal, dreamlike spaces, to combine my father’s 1930’s negatives with my own images, and to explore mark-making and text. I think that’s also part of the reason I’m interested in the non-toxic direct-to-plate photopolymer gravure process. I’m always on the lookout for moments that contain something larger than themselves; the picture I want to make is of an instant in time that is full of other times. The DTP method helps me feel like I’m doing that. I love that I can achieve the tonal richness of the earliest gravures without their toxicity, and that I can conjure up the early chemists of photography and have a conversation with them about what photography can be. I also love that this process requires physical effort—the rubbing of plates, the turning of the press—and that working with paper and ink is tactile and elemental. In my work, I want to create a feeling of collapsed-yet-expanded time. I want the viewer to look at the past, and I want the past to look right back. I want the viewer and the subject to each feel the gaze of the other. And by working with archival images and handwriting, I also want to integrate layers of technology and image-making history. I want to feel like I’m not only drawing with light, I’m drawing with time. © Vaune Trachtman © Vaune Trachtman © Vaune Trachtman © Vaune Trachtman, “Trestle” © Vaune Trachtman, “Tenenment Roof #1” © Vaune Trachtman, “Cycle” © Vaune Trachtman, “Reverie” © Vaune Trachtman, “Skull” © Vaune Trachtman, “Strand (detail of tryptic)” ©Vaune Trachtman, Vaune Trachtman holding the Collector’s Edition of NOW IS ALWAYS in her studio. Vaune Trachtman is a photographer and printmaker whose work honors historic processes while avoiding toxic chemicals. Formerly a master printer of silver-gelatin prints and asphaltum-based photogravures, she began to feel that her immune system was being compromised by those processes. She now makes gravures wi...