Featured Photographer: Tara A. Cronin's Series “Winds”
“Quiet”, 2020 | Archival Pigment Print with hand-markings and drawings using Archival Ink and Artist’s Blood | Edition of 4
Leaving her home after the last rays of light have left the horizon, Tara A. Cronin steps from her mountainside home on the Big Island of Hawaii and sets forth into the thick, dark jungle before her. Nary a streetlight or house light in sight, and meandering barefoot, this form of Japanese meditation provides Tara time and experience to reflect, think, and formulate her artistic thoughts into cohesive and well-planned photographic projects. Being a very sensory person, she works with sounds, light, and tactile elements when making work and installations. It is her latest project, Winds, that comes to us at Analog Forever Magazine to inspect and respect for its connection to the analog world, while also incorporating some digital methods into her workflow. Creating her unique prints in very small editions that connect the physical world with a study of language, Tara fluidly and ritually marks on the print using both archival inks and her very own blood. These markings resemble language, genetic code, and astronomical star maps to guide us through both the inner and outer cosmos.
The quiet moments that Tara seeks come from an early upbringing in small-town New Jersey, where local woods were a place of solace. Creative pursuits came early in the form of music, drawing, and writing, and it was the love of language that drew her to pursue a degree in Creative and Nonfiction Writing from The New School in 2005. An early, but informal, interest in photography was further explored while earning her MFA in Advanced Studies in Photography from the International Center of Photography / Bard College Program in 2010. Her studies predated a time when digital had fully taken over, and a love of working with film and alternative processes was cementing during her prolific studies in the visual arts.
“Fronds”, 2020 | Archival Pigment Print with hand-markings and drawings using Archival Ink and Artist’s Blood | Edition of 4
“Glacier”, 2020 | Archival Pigment Print with hand-markings and drawings using Archival Ink and Artist’s Blood | Edition of 4
Her latest body of work, Winds, follows a similar aesthetic as a previous collection, Archetypal (seen by myself previously, and equally as stunning), where Tara begins her printmaking by using transparency film, often Fuji Velvia or Provia, as a first step to create the foundation for her work. These photographs rely on the natural landscape to provide a sort of background for her images. Switching over to scanning of her selected images, Tara then makes digital prints, usually 17x22”, as the canvas for her final steps in a finished piece. Once these steps have been satisfactorily achieved, she then lets both her conscious and subconscious be her guide while she meticulously marks on the surface of each print using a combination of archival inks and her own blood. The resulting markings - lines, spheres, circles, diamonds - create a universe, resulting in a type of language known only to her. Infinitely intriguing, the viewer must find the personal key to unlock the sequence and meaning behind each unique print.
“Nebulae”, 2020 | Archival Pigment Print with hand-markings and drawings using Archival Ink and Artist’s Blood | Edition of 4
Using her experience with creative writing, these prints are initially conceived through words. “Lately I’ll have a list of feelings, words, concepts, even entire pieces of prose that I write in response to an image, a book, a concept I’ve been researching, ruminating, and mulling for a time.” It is the planning stages of her projects that enable her to work thoroughly and quickly during the physical steps of creating her photographs. The Winds collection was made and finalized during the early months of 2020. She states, “It will take me maybe weeks to months to research and give thought to the various components of a project; but actually creating the physical works I end up doing in a sort of whirlwind couple weeks as if I’m trying to expel all the accumulated pieces of expression.”
A passage from her artist statement informs us of her intentions quite perfectly:
“In traversing the path I've come to find a fascination and appreciation for the things, the roots and origins of what brings us together rather than divides us; our humanity and those things with which we tend to define it. One of those items I love to explore is the idea of Language. Language, at root, is a form of communication, that can be found in many forms. There are verbal and non-verbal languages, languages of history, there are chemical languages within our bodies and a form of communication we still cannot put our finger on but as of today we call it dark energy, and this ties together/communicates, apparently, the entirety of our cosmos.”
We applaud the efforts of Tara A. Cronin to think outside the box in conceiving, planning, and executing her latest projects. The consensus at Analog Forever is that Tara and her work are among the most interesting and imaginative in recent months that we have had the honor of viewing, and with that, we wish her the best - most especially during an upcoming exhibition at Brooklyn’s fabulous Klompching Gallery. Tara has the honor of being one of the selected few to exhibit her works as part of their Fresh 2020 Annual Summer Photography Exhibition, from September 9 through October 10, 2020, with an opening reception scheduled for September 10. Anyone in the Tri-State area is encouraged to visit the gallery to experience Tara’s prints in person. We will be keeping a close eye on the festivities and Tara herself, moving forward, and hope you do as well.
GALLERY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Kirchoff is a photographic artist, independent curator and juror, and advocate for the photographic arts. He has been a juror for Photolucida’s Critical Mass, and has reviewed portfolios for the Los Angeles Center of Photography’s Exposure Reviews and CENTER’s Review Santa Fe. Michael has been a contributing writer for Lenscratch, Light Leaked, and Don’t Take Pictures magazine. In addition, he spent ten years (2006-2016) on the Board of the American Photographic Artists in Los Angeles (APA/LA), producing artist lectures, as well as business and inspirational events for the community. Currently, he is also Editor-in-Chief at Analog Forever Magazine, Founding Editor for the online photographer interview website, Catalyst: Interviews, and a Contributing Editor for the column, Traverse, at One Twelve Publishing. Previously, Michael spent over four years as Editor at BLUR Magazine.
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