Description
In 2010, Aspen Mays started her collection of dodging tools with several that she found in an abandoned darkroom at the National Astronomical Observatory in Chile during a Fulbright Fellowship. The collection has since grown to include dodging tools from darkroom across the world. Mays first began making photograms of her collection for this ongoing series during her 2012 residency at Light Work. This special edition print was made with an elaborate tool discovered in the darkroom at Light Work. Mays returned to Syracuse to create the print and says it is “the most remarkable dodging tool she’s ever seen.” Mays continues, “while some tools seem to be made for printing very specific images –fitting the photograph almost like a lock and key– they are often left behind as a helpful offering to other darkroom users. I came to think of their improvisational character as sharing a common tool-making impulse, all in service to the subjective nature of seeing”. Aspen Mays was raised in Charleston, SC. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in Anthropology and Spanish from The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She is currently an Associate Professor and Chair of Photography at the California College of the Arts. She is represented by Higher Pictures Generation in New York.
