Exhibition - Playtime at Perspectives

Perspective Fine Art Photography Gallery
1310 1/2B Chicago Avenue, Evanston IL
November 3 - 27, 2016
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 5, 5:00 - 7:00pm

Perspective on Photography Lecture
On Collaboration: One Thing Leads to Another
Sunday, November 20, 4:30pm

About Playtime
The sticky, colorful, in-your-face relentlessness; the shopping, meals, and laundry; the ever-present detritus on the counters and floor: this is daily life when raising children. We turned our cameras to this overlooked realm and embraced the chaos that humbles and exasperates, but ultimately enriches us.  

When we were in the thick of child-rearing and holding down jobs, it was difficult to maintain our previous collaborative photographic working methods. We put aside the large format camera and tripod, loaded 35mm cameras with Kodak Gold 200 film and positioned them in easy reach. We abandoned the road trips and journeyed into our children's world. Hours in the darkroom were replaced with quick trips to Walgreen's to drop off film, returning in an hour for a stack of 4 x 6 prints to critique. The amped up color palette of  “snapshot” film and the impressionistic grain of a shallow depth of field disassembled reality and yielded surprises. We stopped telling the children to clean up and delighted instead in the unfolding landscapes of their play, rich with transformation and wonder. By surrendering to the process, the mundane became the marvelous.
                           
Ciurej and Lochman have been collaborating on photographic narratives since they met as students at the Institute of Design in Chicago. For nearly four decades they have chronicled the physical and psychological landscapes in which they travel.

Thanks to Bob Tanner and Perspectives Gallery for inviting us to revisit this work from 2002, and to our children who played so diligently. Special thanks to those who know that bringing children into light is critical to evolved thinking about women and work.