Laurie Victor Kay

October 2007
On the Kaleidoscope Series

I am intrigued by enigma in a photograph. Furthermore, I would like my images to be read, explored, and experienced. I believe a good picture is open to many interpretations. It would make me happy to have the viewer interpret an image in a way that I myself had not been aware of.

Within the Kaleidoscpoe series, everything is that which is not. The familiar is new. A space is but fractures. A part is turned. In looking through an opening, whether a camera or one's eye, the world is seen differently. Patterns change, at once creating an illusion. Images are only partially real and mostly imagined. Some are formal studies of shape and form. Other are fantastical dreams in which blurred people are twisted and turned to create new forms. Perhaps my desire to remain conceptually lost in the city of Paris began with this body of work. Cubism and minimalism continually weave their way in and out of my artwork.

July 2007

The Au Musée project was, in effect, given birth through the eyes of a child. As I photographed children in museum spaces, I found myself trying to understand how that world might look through their eyes. There is a way in which children view art that is so gut level. They have an innate, unpretentious way of breaking things down and asking questions. The children in my Au Musée work are never directed or told what to do. I let the space and the art speak to them. And while some of my images ask questions, others are meant simply to take the viewer into one’s own imagined state.

My images are imbued by several art movements. You will find cubism, minimalism, pointillism, impressionism, color fields, and a touch of the surreal. Symbolism is also of importance to me. The depth of an image is something I continually manipulate. I intentionally blur to at once disorient and create a wash of color and light. And while children are not always present in my work, I have found that their influence has helped lead me to this way of seeing.

Au Museé has mor recently taken me out of the museum landscape and into public spaces where I am interested in creating constructed images that reflect an emotional state. My color palatte has amplified. There is a psychological element to the coming and going of people that continually pulls me in. It is at once mathmatical, deliberate, and completely random. I lose myself in the crowds and my work could not exist with this sense of change.

The images from the Au Musée series are photographed using a leica m7 and Kodak portra uc film. The selected negatives are then drum scanned, The process of digitally working on the files includes hour of fine tuning to create the color, tones, and detail within the image..