Myra Greene

Myra Greene is a contemporary photographer who is also currently an Assistant Professor in the Photography Department at Columbia College Chicago. Most of Greene's work centers around ideas of exploring her own identity as a Black Woman and examining unique racial issues. She is also currently working on a project tentatively entitled "Whiteness," which will be a series of color photographs.

Greene's extensive work with the wet plate collodion process not only as a means of printing in an era when ambrotype had long been forgotten, but also as a conceptual element makes her an important part of a larger contemporary movement to go back to old methods of photo-making. The popularization of digital cameras has made art photography so accessible that there is a trend among more accomplished artists to begin making their photogaphs in old, labor-intensive ways in order to separate themselves from the point-and-shoot digital artists.

History as an Artist
Myra Greene holds an MFA in Photography from the University of New Mexico (2002) and a BFA from Washington University, St. Louis (1997). She has also been an Artist in Residence at Light Work in Syracuse and the Center of Photography at Woodstock.

Solo exhibitions of her work have recently been held at Harold Lemmerman Gallery, Jersey City, and http://www.mdartplace.org/exhibitions/past/2006/incubator_091906.html Maryland Art Place], Baltimore, and her photographs have been included in numerous group shows at venues such as the Art Institute of Colorado, Denver; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut; Center of Photography, Woodstock, New York; and Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, New York. .

Her work was recently included in of [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res9B04E6D6153FF930A15757C0A9609C8B63&sec&spon&pagewantedall Double Exposure: African Americans Before and Behind the Camera], at the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art in Hartford Connecticut .

Photography

Whiteness-in process
In spring of 2008 Greene received a faculty grant from Columbia College Chicago, where she is currently an assistant professor. With this grant, Myra will continue her photography project that she jokingly refers to with the working name "My 50 White Friends" but is truthfully tentatively titled simply "Whiteness". Myra will travel around the country to photograph 35 people in 5 different states and explore their racial identity as Caucasians through the lens of her camera. The images will appear to be documents of people's lives, but will teeter into performative photographs to contrast, or perhaps compliment, her previous series centering on her own identity of "blackness".

Character Recognition-ongoing
Greene's ongoing project entitled "Character Recognition" started the day she learned how to make ambrotypes with the wet plate collodion process. As part of a workshop with fellow artists, she was photographed in a way that, when later seeing the image, she remarked "I look like a slave". Though her peers believed that she was offended with her accidental portrayal, in truth she was intrigued. To Greene, this was a jumping block for a project of unpredictable proportions. . She began to wonder how others saw her, if they saw beyond her skin color.

Greene repeatedly explores ethnic features by photographing her own nose, lips, ears, and skin—which she describes as “the features of race”—as if dismembered from the rest of her body. Each work in this collection is a 3 by 4 inched black glass plate ambrotype that is placed over black backing to make the image visable. Greene prefers that the plates be displayed simply set on a ledge, not covered in glass or separated from the viewer, but in the same space so that they can be examined up-close. There are 35 plates total as of 2008, but there will most likely be more will be to come.

The Conceptual Meaning of Wet Plate Collodion Processing
Besides the statement Green makes by choosing to use primitive processes in a digital camera world, there are many other things that her choice to make images with this process are saying. In using ambrotypes, a photographic process linked to the times of ethnographic classification, Greene has achieved perfect marriage of concept and process, which is why her images are successful. Every plate has a flaw or two, a mar where solutions met, a drip when too much of a solutions was applied, or a bare spot on the corner of the plate where Green's thumb held the plate during processing. These flaws, especially the thumb prints, only enhance the concept of identity in the series. When the viewer considers the high-contrast style of Green's prints along with her wide-eyed, bottom-tooth-showing poses and the antique stylings of the plates the impression of a slave auction is clear. Greene is challenging the viewer to see past what she is presenting them with, to see something other than her race, when really everything about the photo right down to the process it's printed with, is designed to force her race on viewers.

Pox-2005
When Green contracted a case of adult chickenpox she should have been kept from working on any projects at all. Instead, she documented the swelling bumps rising off of her skin, and when the scars healed she was able to take the negative experience of illness and turn it into art. Green turned the film of her temporarily disfigured skin into a book. That book transforms a grotesque illness into a tangible representation of an emotive state, which can facilitate exploration of a physical release of a mindful situation. The book includes 10 images and text in a 4.5 by 6 inch bound form.

Self Portraits-2004
Here, Greene created a series of 12 "destroyed" portraits. Experimenting with photographic techniques to completely reject the photographic ideals of clarity and precision, the distorted studies of Green's body parts go beyond the normal portrait. These images become layers of sensibility and emotion rather than just 13 by 10 inkjet images they are. There have been some writen works done about this collection, including an essay by Carla Williams, and Conversations Most Intimate by Jeffreen M. Hayes and Bennie Johnson.

The Beautiful Ones-2002
This series of photographs includes black pop-star icons, as well as members of Greene's family. The images are physically worked over, mutating the original portrait to the point that the famous is indistinguishable from the family. All 20 images are untitled, 16 by 20 inches, c-prints.

One more photo series can be found in the next section. All summaries of photographic projects paraphrased from same source.

Hairy Projects
Most of Greene's other works involve hair of Black Women as a symbol for her race. Each small collection is part of the larger collection called "Hairy Projects."

Hairy Installation-2004
While much of her work has been photos, Greene has also worked in nearly every other medium imaginable. Her installation piece featured a simple white couch sitting down a long hallway. The couch has single hairs growing from the upholstery. When the viewer approached the couch and as they sit, they would hear the simple and amplified sounds of Greene combing, pulling and playing with her hair. The couch is meant to emulate her actions, and stand as a representation as the Greene herself.

Hairy Pillows-2001
Greene created a series of textile pieces incorporating artificial hair worn by Black Women, commonly known as a [http://en. .org/wiki/Hair_weave "weave"] into simple throw pillows. The hair is meant to recall an absent head, the strands of hair left by a lover or a friend. The hair that is incorporated with the fabric defines each pillow as a unique object, or a separate individual. Some pillows calmly bear the tresses, others burst at the seams, the hair faux coiffure out. The pillows range from clean and manicured to the wild and brash, mimicking the true-life attitudes of black hair.

Hairy Lockets-2000
Lockets were the most delicate objects that Greene created in association with the normally more brazen theme of hair. Recalling , these lockets hold the images of individuals and hair products. Using color images from photographic slides along with synthetic hair creates a 20th century twist on this tradition. The goal is to create objects with hair which conjure memory. Like the pillows, the lockets allow the hair to spew out of its shell, but because of the small amount of hair used and the delicate construction, these objects are not seen as repulsive, but instead as unique keepsakes.

Hairy Photographs-1999
Greene used every type of black hair possible to explore the nap, braid, dreadlocks, twist, straight, curly, natural or synthetic natures of the hair of the black population. Her goal was to conveyed the magnetism and the allure that she felt was missing in everyday descriptions of Black hair, so each photographic frame is stuffed with as much hair as possible. All 12 images are untitled, 30 by 40 inch c-prints. While these are photographs, they are listed in the non-photogrpahic section because they are considered part of the "Hairy Projects" more than they are a photographic series in their own right.

All summaries of non-photographic projects paraphrased from same source.

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