Ivy Bigbee

Ivy Bigbee is a longstanding artist working in the Polaroid processes, SX-70s, emulsion lifts and polaroid transfers, as well as cyanotypes.
From: Centreville, VA, USA.
Shows: Cyanotypes, Polaroid image transfers, Polaroid emulsion lifts, Polaroid SX-70s.


Ivy Bigbee passionately feels that alternative photography is predictably unpredictable, hence the absence of stasis, instead that this photography sector generates an ever-present tidal pull to image states, or whereabouts previously unvisited. In her undergraduate days at University of North Florida, where the author-poet-photographer later taught photography, she was known as a solar queen. A professor took her aside, saying: “you know, Ivy, solarization is not the answer to everything!”

Ivy Bigbee celebrates the malleability and fusibility of image and material by subjecting various Polaroid films to the combined and alchemic, mercurial moods of subject and photographer.

“Alternative photography and especially anything in the Polaroid realm is the only photographic sector that offers a complete sense of freedom and abandon. It is a joyous, introspective celebration.”

Regarding the recent emulsion-tinkering Nautilus, Bigbee notes that as she placed the image on its substrate, the gelatinous emulsion quickened and swelled as to seemingly spark life within the image of an iridescent, trembling, three-dimensional marine creature. When the lift dried, the Dead Sea, salted out traces of that marine existence remained.

Ivy has also written a book (grant publication) Optical Allusions: An Art Photographer’s Poems.

More about Ivy Bigbee:
Articles

Photographer is also featured in:

Alternative Photography: Art and Artists, Edition I

Contact Ivy Bigbee

  • Email: IBigbee (at) aol.com
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