Cyanotypes, Gum over cyanotype, Pinholes

Nancy Breslin lives and works in Newark, Delaware, USA. She came to photography after a first career in medicine, and her initial focus was traditional silver prints, mostly of circuses and amusement parks. But several years ago she discovered pinhole photography, and has since also ventured into work with alternative processes such as cyanotypes and VanDyke brown prints. Her largest current project is Squaremeals: A Pinhole Diary of Eating Out, which consists of pinhole pictures of nearly every meal she has had in a restaurant or friend's home for over three years. The long exposures create an oddly distorted "diary" since the objects of her attention at the meal (her friends and family) become ghostly, while items she may not have noticed become prominent.

She has turned to cyanotype when working on fabric suits the idea, such as the "Pillow for Wet Dreams" which features a roll of Holga negatives from the rue Saint-Denis in Paris (a red light district) contact printed onto silk and then sewn. For figurative work she turns to the rich browns and timeless look of VanDyke prints.

Nancy Breslin has been teaching photography part-time at the University of Delaware and has exhibited frequently in the mid-Atlantic region, including at the Biggs Museum, the Arlington Arts Center, the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts and Saint Joseph's University.

"My hope is that, when seeing a set of these images, a viewer will be met with equal parts familiarity and strangeness."


More about Nancy:
Articles

Photographer is also featured in:
Alternative Photography: Art and Artists, Edition I

Contact

• Email: nbreslin (at) udel.edu
  
• Website