Bird Silhouettes / Women Bird Series / NYC Silhouettes

Kestrel & Cardinal, 2001. While living on Peaks Island, Maine I began to pay more attention to birds. The house I rented had several bird feeders & there were no squirrels on Peaks! My intrigue with silhouettes was prompted by looking at bird identification books. I had an interest in silhouettes (and once wrote an article about a woman in Maine who still cut silhouettes) as they were a precursor to the invention of photography. I cut a few of my own bird silhouette as you see below.

Women/Bird series . Top L to R: is Cardinal & Kestrel & below L to R: is Kingfisher & Meadowlark.

NYC Silhouette series, 2009-10, cut paper & archival pigment prints from a 4x5 inch pinhole paper negative

We all know if a house, a car, a chair, or a piece of clothing is old or not. Perhaps not the exact year, unless our area of expertise –but shapes change, just like everything else. I paired my cut silhouette of women’s fashion from a certain time period with a landmark NYC architectural site from the same time period. The Brooklyn Bridge 1869; the Flatiron building 1902; followed by, the NYC Stock Exchange building 1903; and, Rockefeller Center, 1933.

Cupboard Finds are archival pigment prints each size 22 1/2 x 30 inches. These were made on cyanotype paper that I then scanned and enlarged.