The Contact Printers Guild is pleased to introduce accomplished New Mexico-based photographer Linda Elvira Piedra as its newest member.
For more than a decade, Linda Elvira Piedra has made most of her images with an old wooden 8x10" Kodak D-2 camera and uncoated lenses. Occasionally she has used a 4x5" and even a 35mm. She is devoted to the traditions of the contact print by processing and hand-printing all her own work. She uses pyro for film developer and prepares her paper developers from old Ansco formulas, completing the printing process with selenium toning. Finished prints are spotted and then dry mounted onto Rising Museum Board. Following is her Artist’s Statement.
[font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2][color=#000000][color=#000000][font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]“The camera opened a door inside me through which I could observe the world, and it has often been that the camera itself has revealed the world to me. I began photography out of a desire to see things as they are. I had to find some way to make a relationship between my own nature and the Nature of Reality. Only by engaging my energies in this pursuit would my life have gravity. I do not separate my aims for understanding from my photographic work. This work provides the means and material for me to confront my life and find meaning. [/font][/color][/color][/size][/font]
[font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2][color=#000000][color=#000000][font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]“My first photographs were portraits, and I called them paintings of the interior. I feel all of my work, no matter what the subject, has this orientation toward portraiture. The process had already been initiated in me, a wish to see deeply and honestly into life in order to understand. Looking into others became also looking into myself. With the camera I discovered an unfamiliar world, while at the same time affirming my essential belief in the beauty of the world. So began real seeing. [/font][/color][/color][/size][/font]
[font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2][color=#000000][color=#000000][font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]“Photography is a meaningful record of facts and offers a possibility to reveal the true Nature within human beings, this Nature that arises as an expression of naturalness. Gradually, naturally, I have turned my gaze to it. It is the forming of a relationship with Nature. In water particularly I find myself met, not only mirrored, and enlarged, with my affinity to see into its depths, its many layers, and celebrate its movement and change. My awareness of change is a part of my concern for time, in which no moment is ever repeated, whether it is a pattern etched in the river or the expression on a face. What I find true in people I find in Nature as well—a quiet place for stillness and beauty.” [/font][/color][/color][/size][/font]
[font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2][color=#000000]To see Elvira's work, please visit her web site at
http://www.lindaelvirapiedra.com/. You can find a selection of her work for sale in the Contact Printers Guild
online store.[/color][/size][/font]
With Elvira, the Contact Printers Guild currently has 11 members. The others are B[size=2]ill Bartels (USA), Ray Bidegain (USA), Gerhard Bock (USA), Joe Freeman (USA), Andrew Frith (USA), Susan Huber (Canada), Patrick Kolb (USA), Matthew Magruder (USA), George Provost (USA) and John Wimberley (USA). [/size]
[size=2]For more information about us, or to sign up for our monthly newsletter, please visit us at
http://www.contactprintersguild.com/.
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Linda Elvira Piedra joins the Contact Printers Guild 
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