Light in Purse 2012 -2018
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Every Day - Ongoing, Los Angeles 2018
Gallery 307, UGA 2016
Portfolio Show at the Atlanta Photography Group 2016
This exhibition was curated by Lisa Sutcliffe, who was the curator of photography at the Milwaukee Art Museum
The Photograms of Christina Price Washington
Christina Price Washington—who has work in Suburbia, currently on view Hagedorn Foundation Gallery—is concurrently working on a different set of images that deal her “mistrust of the lens.” Christina places a piece of light sensitive photographic paper into her purse everyday, and allows her actions, objects and own touch create light-based compositions on the paper. Motivated in part by questions about the value and uniqueness of photographs, Washington said that the resulting photograms are imitating the objects in her purse. Her process has an unusual anti-indexical relationship to the resulting composition—these works are very abstract and simultaneously feel both intimate and sterile. Her unique photograms intersect with works by László Moholy-Nagy—or more recently, those of Walead Besthy. And while best seen in person, she has scanned them for easy viewing.
In Christina Price Washington’s series Light in Purse, a piece of photographic paper becomes a visual logbook of her movements and a day’s activities. By placing the light-sensitive paper inside the bag, each instance of her opening her bag is automatically recorded as outside light filters in and strikes the paper, which results in the monochromatic forms once the print is developed in the darkroom. The paper in the bag also naturally becomes bent and folded as the day goes on, adding a weathered texture that complements the abstract forms of the exposed surface.