The large format experimental photography in “Ellen Carey: Struck by Light,” on view at New Britain Museum of American Art (NBMAA) through January 28, 2024, delivers a feast of process for the eyes. Her work has the sensibility of color-field painting brought into photographic context relating similar minimalist simplicity, elegance and color-saturation. It is remarkable to see the physicality of Carey’s nearly floor-to-ceiling unframed polaroid prints. The artist’s “pulls” are installed pinned to the walls and hanging unframed, exposed and tactile. The beauty of her photographic experimentation keys to size and color, and the positive/negative aspect of showing both print and emulsion sheets side-by-side with equal emphasis.
Remembering NBMAA Director Brett Abbott’s specialization in photography from my interview with him for Artscope’s March/April 2022 issue, I asked NBMAA curator Lisa Williams how Carey’s photographic sensibility reflects that interest. She responded: “Director Brett Abbott previously worked with Ellen Carey on her exhibit ‘Ellen Carey: Dings, Pulls and Shadows’ at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art (in Fort Worth, Texas) in 2018. Her two-part NBMAA show ‘Ellen Carey: Struck by Light’ provides a wonderful opportunity for their continued collaboration, following Brett’s move to the NBMAA.”
Although a Hartford resident today, Carey was based in New York City for many years, even while as a professor at the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford, a position that she still holds. Historically speaking, she was among a small group of pivotal artists in New York creating change at the ferment of experimentation in large format photography using Polaroid’s 20” x 24” camera. She counted John Coplans and others amongst her friends within a tight community of peers defining the potential of this new art form.
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