Description
Contact Sheet 159 is published in conjunction with the exhibition Archipelago held in the Light Work Main Gallery November 1 to December 23, 2010. In the series Archipelago, Artist Yolanda del Amo photographs family, friends, and acquaintances in various settings around the world as they perform scenes from a universal narrative about close human relationships.
To name her series, del Amo uses a metaphor that describes the turbulent nature of intimacy. Powerful forces deep below the surface of the earth form archipelagos, which are chains or clusters of individual islands. Concerned with the geography of human interaction, del Amo depicts the natural forces that lie just below the surface of relationships between people–their conflicting and ever-present needs for intimacy and connection, independence and individuality.
In Archipelago, these competing forces seem to have reached a temporary stasis that has driven del Amo’s subjects inward to their own thoughts and feelings. Each photograph represents a fragile time in any relationship when people–whether they are mothers and sons, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, lovers, or simply friends–momentarily live alone, together.
This catalogue includes three essays by Light Work Associate Director Mary Goodwin.
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Yolanda del Amo was born in Madrid and received a Bachelor and Master of Science in Mathematics from the Universitat zu Koln, Cologne, Germany in 1993 and a Master of Fine Arts in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence in 2004. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in numerous venues, including the Hudson Franklin Gallery, New York City; the Barbara Walters Gallery at Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY; the Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York City; the National Portrait Gallery both in London and in Washington, DC; the Centro de Cultura Contemporanea, Barcelona, Spain; the Instituto Cervantes, New York City; and the Palais de Glace, Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is currently an assistant professor of photography and digital media at Ramapo College of New Jersey.
