Suzann Fulbright's Studio

Artist's Statement

Objectives:  My work in Western Europe involves relationships between land and sea architecture.   My Images comprise portfolios on maritime and inland themes, studying the relationship between the two.  The influence over the Veneto by Venice is one case study that was the point of my return to the city of Vicenza and the architecture of Andrea Palladio this fall (2008 happens to be the Year of Palladio, celebrated in Vicenza, city of Palladio’s birth).  Rising in the wake and last days of the Venetian maritime republic, during a time of transition to agrarian life, this architecture is rich in invention.  Palladio’s Teatro Olympico takes reality onto the stage explaining the urban theatre in sharply angled perspectives as one would experience them in the narrow streets of Vicenza or Venice.  This experience informed my vision.  Taking questions of subject, history and theory, my image making deals with projecting three dimensional arts on to two, resolving issues of representation, abstraction and temporality, the presentation of events in time which I call architectural moments.  My working elements are traditional involving a high degree of realism though the results strive to reach beyond this. As regards my yacht photography, I should mention that classic regattas held in the Mediterranean have provided me with virtual floating museums of vintage (late 1800’s to 1939) and classic yachts under sail.  All of my nautical images in the vintage yacht series are recent photographs taken by me from either press boats or other yachts during the events. 

Technique:  limited edition photographs available are products of both negative film and digital photography, taken with a thirty-five millimeter cameras.  Optical C-prints  from film are printed by hand in a professional laboratory.   Work shot in black and white, printed on fiber and toned in gold, and transparency film also comprise my portfolio..  Black and white prints are products of my own old Bessler and chemistry.

 Bio:  Though I was born in St. Louis, I was raised in Columbia, Missouri and obtained a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics from Stephens College there.  This education included coursework in photography, fine arts and art history.  While at Stephens I worked as an architectural draftsperson and for a photo-chemist as a printer and chemical and photographic studio assistant.  The Columbia Daily Tribune employed me as a photographer before I moved to New York to pursue education and experience in architecture.  After working in New York for four years, for architectural firms, including Pei Cobb Freed and Partners and Mitchell Giurgola, I earned acceptance to the Graduate School of Design at Harvard and moved to Cambridge for their MARCH I program. Instructional influences at the GSD resulted in the above mentioned project, that is, researching the relations between land and sea architectures, necessitating trips to former maritime empires and museums of Europe with a camera with a view to producing a book in architectural history and theory.  Photography has worked its way thus back into my life. Last year I had the pleasure of exhibiting in the prestigious Art in the Square in Belleville, Illinois and in the Central West End Art Fair and Taste, St. Louis.