Annie
Hogan

Bloodlines

My research and creative activity had when I moved to The South. I have enjoyed using new and different methods and mediums in my art practice such as an 8 x 10 pinhole and using alternative silver processes to reinforce my conceptual underpinnings of the work. These two series speak to race, power and the asymmetrical balance between them both now and the years before reconstruction. The Asymmetry and The Bloodline series (2008-2011) consists of 10 x 8 pinhole camera prints of interiors and exteriors of important houses in NC, VA and DC. Employing the process of haphazardly spreading the non-silver emulsion on watercolor paper, the Bloodline works speak to what little lived history of the enslaved populations was recorded (e.g., Berkeley Plantation, VA) compared to what histories are known and recorded from an Anglo-American perspective. The mis-application of cyanotype emulsion alludes to the idea of the continuance of generational histories within families. One's race and bloodline were important markers for the continuation and perpetration of this power filled system of imbalance oft called in the North, 'that peculiar institution'. The technology (or lack thereof) behind this series is linked to the conceptual ideas in the series. I am using the 10 x 8 pinhole camera (a technology available and used during the civil war era) to make simple images that obscure the complexity of that era. The pinhole is the simplest of cameras. Yet, I am challenged to depict complexity of the subject through simplicity in the final form of the work.