Rebecca Clark

Rebecca Clark, a fine art photographer and educator, explores alternative processes in her work, notably cyanotype prints featuring imperfect plant specimens. Her compositions evoke themes of change and imbalance, diverging from traditional cyanotype methods. Recently retired from teaching, her artistry reflects a lifetime of exploration and education.
From: Connecticut, USA
Shows: Cyanotypes

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Rebecca Clark is a fine art photographer and educator. Her work has always involved some form of alternative process or manipulation of media including digital photo composite. Her recent cyanotype prints represent blemished, irregular, and withered plant material, inspired by the experience of sudden and irreversible change. The native plants and leaves she photographs are characters existing in ambiguous time and space, that respond to forces beyond their control. Rebecca continues the evolution started by time, weather, and insects through the photographic process using motion blur, selective focus, and digital composite and manipulation. Within each composition are juxtapositions intended to represent the precarious balance between dualities and the impact when balance is lost.

Rebecca’s work diverges from traditional uses of the cyanotype medium in several ways. Rather than representing ideal plant specimens for their scientific or aesthetic value she selects her subject matter for their imperfections. Instead of pressing plant material flat against the paper to produce a photogram, she photographs still life arrangements that represent spatial relationships, time, and impermanence. Those images become digital negatives for making 15″x20″ contact prints on hand coated paper that enable her to enlarge the plants and leaves several times larger than life size.

Rebecca recently retired as Professor of Art from the Community College of Rhode Island where she taught photography for 33 years. She studied art history at Oberlin College where she earned her BA and holds a MFA in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design.