Christine Elfman

Christine Elfman
Cave, 2024
Size: 8.5x8.5 inches (closed)
Edition of 4
Faded lichen dye on paper in artist enclosure
Unfixed, fades in light

Photographs reflect our desire for clarity and security, yet also remind us of everything left undescribed and unknown. All solid shapes dissolve in light combines unfixed fading photographs with relatively permanent silver and pigment prints to explore these inherent tensions within photographic representation. Many of the unfixed images are anthotypes made by month-long outdoor exposures, during which the sun bleaches paper saturated with light-sensitive lichen dye. As we view these fading photographs, the same light that created them continues to transform them. Housed in a protective enclosure, the physical act of opening and closing the portfolio to reveal and conceal the fugitive photograph enacts the impossible desire to hold things through their image.

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Christine Elfman is an artist based in Ithaca, New York who explores the inseparability of stillness and change, resolution and ambiguity, intention and the unforeseen. She uses photographic processes in which the subject matter acts as its own medium to make images that slowly shift in meaning and form over time. Many of her photographs are made by fading natural dyes in the sun, and continue to disappear when viewed. Elfman has had solo exhibitions at Penumbra Foundation (New York), Wasserman Projects (Detroit, MI), Houston Center for Photography (Houston, TX), EUQINOM Gallery (San Francisco), TILT Center for the Contemporary Image (Philadelphia), University of the Arts (Philadelphia), Ithaca College (Ithaca, NY), Gallery Wendi Norris (San Francisco). She is the recipient of a Light Work Grant, and residencies at Constance Saltonstall Foundation and the Cape Cod National Seashore. Her work has been featured in publications including BOMB Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, Photograph Magazine, and Der Greif. She received her BFA from Cornell University and MFA from California College of the Arts. Elfman is represented by EUQINOM Gallery (San Francisco), and currently teaches photography at Ithaca College.

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