Amy Holmes George - Visiting Artist

Thanks to the incredible generosity of the Art Force in Amarillo, I was able to bring the photographer and digital imaging artist, Amy Holmes George, to Amarillo College. Amy taught workshops to the students, and gave a talk to the public about her work. She also has a selection of photographs from her project, Double Vision: A View of Florence Past and Present, on display in the Southern Light Gallery through the end of the month.

Amy received a Fulbright Scholarship to do this body of work which is in the genre of Rephotographic Survey Projects. She went to Florence, Italy for four months and made photographs from the exact location shot by the Alinari Brothers a century earlier. The stories that she told about the research that went into finding the locations, gaining permission, and traveling with her 4 month old baby really brought the project to life.

Her images were shot with a modern digital camera and printed on the historic platinum/ palladium process which was used by the Alinari Bros. To make her ink jet negatives for the contact printing processes she uses a system called Precision Digital Negatives. The resulting images are just gorgeous. In the installation, just above her images, is a contact print from the glass plates of the Alinari photograph. It is amazing to stand in front of a pair and look back and forth at the differences and similarities between the images.

If you haven't already dropped by the gallery, please stop by this week and look before the show comes down.

Photo Credit: On Left: Piazza and Church of S. Maria Novella, Florence, circa 1880, modern gelatin silver reproduction, © Fratelli Alinari / On Right: Piazza and Church of Santa Maria Novella, Florence, 2008, platinum/palladium print, © Amy Holmes George