ARTIST STATEMENT
Brittanie Bondie is a process-based photographer working primarily with 19th-century image-making methods. Inspired by the work of botanist and photographer Anna Atkins (1799–1871), Bondie’s work retools the cyanotype to make connections to the natural world of the 21st century. Her choice to use historical and sometimes camera-less techniques to create her photographs provides an opportunity for a direct visual relationship between subject and photograph. Her subjects are often nonhuman forces present in nature, such as polluted water bodies and synthetic chemicals. Her most current series of cyanotype and lumen prints features the health of various water bodies in the Great Lakes region. Working in collaboration with her subjects—water, sunlight, time, and any existing pollutants in the water— she submerges photo paper directly into freshwater lakes and rivers. The results are unpredictable visual undulations of form and color, which coincide with existing PFAS chemicals, algal blooms, and other toxic substances present in the water. Abstracted from concrete elements found in nature, her work is meant to offer alternative ways of viewing a photograph—more specifically, by elevating the very subjects we may fear, a deeper connection to the natural world is suggested through her work.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Brittanie Bondie (b. 1984 in Ypsilanti, MI) is an artist working primarily with analogue photographic materials and alternative processes. In 2015, she received her MFA in Creative Photography from the University of Florida. Since then, she has taught digital photography at various higher-educational institutions around the U.S., including the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. Here she had her first solo-exhibition, Objective Material, featuring large-scale, abstract, camera-less photographs inspired by the environment. She continues to teach photography and make photographs of themes and materials inspired by nature. She currently works with and cares for cultural objects on paper at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
© Brittanie Bondie