This week i’m joined by photographer Laura Plageman. Earlier this summer she was selected by Jen Bekman Gallery here in New York City as the winner of the gallery’s annual Hey Hot Shot competition, a major honor given by the gallery to an emerging photographer.
Laura’s winning project is called the Response Series. It’s a collection of unusual landscape images that Laura makes by folding, tearing and crumpling her prints and then re-photographing the results with a large format camera. In the final photograph the creases, tears and folds warp the lush greenery and milky white skies of the images to create completely new landscapes.
Laura’s idea of manipulating the landscapes in her prints carries over to her choice of subjects. Her photographs frequently explore natural environments that have been altered — sometimes very subtly— by the hand of man.
Recently, I spoke with Laura over the phone about her Response Series, how self portraiture led her to shooting landscapes, and her experience teaching photography.
Playlist:
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