Mother & Daughters

This is a recent portrait of a mother and her two gorgeous daughters that I took while in California. I love shooting on location at people's homes. Some stairs and a wall in the backyard made a wonderful backdrop for these joyful portraits.

Belly

My beautiful friend Annik is going to have a baby boy in May. While I was visiting California a couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to photograph her. She is radiant and glowing as most pregnant women are, but she is definitely going to be good and ready when her little one decides to arrive. We had so much fun hanging out, laughing, and watching her belly rise and fall as the baby kicked inside. I wish I could be there to photograph the birth!

The perfect wedding

...is when two friends get married (Seena Hassouna & Brandi Flowers), write heartfelt vows, serve good food, and even better cupcakes, and surround themselves with good friends and family. This perfect wedding also happened to take place at my father and stepmother's house up on Mt. Washington in Los Angeles! I photographed the ceremony and Shane Rymer created a unique video of the event....This is not your typical "wedding video." Shane is an amazing cameraman/writer/director/editor. I feel fortunate that he used some of my photographs in his piece...to view the video click HERE. (You can see me shooting in the video)

Not only is Seena a good friend, but he happens to be one my former students. Seena took the first photo class I taught as a graduate student at CU Boulder. At the time he was majoring in architecture. Seena was also instrumental in helping me create my MFA thesis exhibition. Without his help, I am not sure I would have graduated! I introduced Seena to my father, Craig Semingson, who is also an architect. They now work together at a firm in Los Angeles.

Seena and Brandi met on an airplane headed for Denver. The very sweet story is on Brandi's Blog. Look at her first post in 2008. Brandi is also an actress, so when she moved to Los Angeles to be with Seena she instantly had a job with my step-mother, Andrea Balen, in her film production company.

I would have to say that Seena and Brandi are definitely family! I wish them much happiness!

In response to Gaza...

From the series Black & Blue
Ink Jet Print on Paper
2009


I have recently joined an art group called Artnauts which was started at the University of Colorado at Boulder by Professor George Rivera. We have our first group exhibition of the year in Oaxaca, Mexico next month. The title of the show is Azag: Mirroring War and we have been asked to create work responding to what has been taking place in Gaza.

The piece I have created uses mutilated doll parts that I contact printed onto paper coated with Cyanotype. Unfortunately I am allergic to this wonderful process, so I have to limit my contact with the chemicals. I wanted to make an edition of the piece to submit to a political art show at Anderson Ranch and a possible exhibition with Artnauts in Gaza....so I headed for the scanner and layered the cyanotype imagery with a map of Israel and Palestine and printed it on my ink jet printer. Fortunately the scanned image still retains the quality of the hand applied emulsion.

The title of the series, Black & Blue, is both a reference to the blue printing process I am using and the terrible atrocities being committed to people on both sides of the issue. After I completed the piece, a friend commented that the body parts resemble milagros, which is fitting since the piece is about violence and healing. This is the second image in the series (the first is about nuclear power and the environment) that I have created and I plan to continue working with the cyanotype process, my scanner, and issues that are important to me.

The many faces of Cori.

My best friend Cori Chavez asked me to update her photo for her websites. Her friend Beverly Green, a professional stylist, came over and did her hair and make-up. Once the lights were set-up I started shooting away. After a few minutes of shooting, I showed a few images to Cori, and she said we were done! I persuaded her to have me shoot a few more, but it was still one of the fastest shoots I have ever had. The best part was trying to think of silly ways to make Cori's natural smile appear...we had some good laughs!

Self-ish

Self-ish (my grandmother, my mother, myself)
Ink Jet Prints
30"x65"

In 2006 I purchased my first digital SLR camera and began photographing my family members for a solo show, titled Flesh and Blood, I had in Medellin, Colombia. Each head shot was printed 20x30 inches. I was curious about what is visually passed on from generation to generation. The show went well, but I felt like there were too many images involved, so I decided to simplify the project and re-take images of myself, my mother, and my grandmother. A version of this piece was exhibited in the 2007 Faculty Art Exhibition at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Later in 2007 I co-curated a portfolio of photographs with Andrea Wallace and Adriana Restrepo titled RSVP ,which has exhibited in Paris, France and Medellin, Colombia. I included a smaller version of Self-ish in the portfolio.

Here is my artist statement for the piece. In a sense it sums up why photography is so important in my life and why I am attracted to the medium.

"In theory one is aware that the earth revolves, but in practice one does not perceive it, the ground upon which one treads seems not to move, and one can live undisturbed. So it is with time in one's life." --Marcel Proust, from Within A Budding Grove

My Grandmother said to me when I asked permission to take her picture, "I've come to terms with my appearance." Her comment made me wonder how an eighty-eight year old woman should look? She is old and wrinkled, and yet she remains beautiful in my eyes. I see my own transformation from daughter to mother to future grandmother, a visual process I would to some degree be unaware of if it wasn't for photography.

In Richard Dawkins' book titled The Selfish Gene (1976) he writes, "We are survival machines- robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes." The gene is the unit of heredity, which contains all the necessary information for creating plants and animals. In sexual reproduction the genes are mixed and shuffled creating a new cell. Eggs and sperm (the sex cells) each contain 23 chromosomes and when combined make up the required 46 to create a human being. When the two sets merge and if the gene signals differ (dominant genes versus recessive genes), then one characteristic will prevail over the other. Dawkins uses the metaphor of genes as selfish entities, competing to be the carrier, going to battle with the winners making us who we are.

Photography is one of the most widely used mediums in the visual arts. For most users, including myself, we are trying to document our lives, what we have done, and to have the photograph stand in when our memory fails. In a sense it makes us who we are by allowing us to understand, just as genetics does, the ever-continuing development of life.

Supporting the Community

In 2008 the studio donated to silent auctions (mostly schools) to help support worthy causes in the community. I met so many wonderful families to photograph and simply had a blast! What a great way to give back! In future posts I will be featuring some of the families I met. I generally do a one hour portrait session and include a $50 print credit. If you are putting together a silent auction and would like us to consider donating, please contact the studio!