Poignant Pics no. 57: On Fran Forman's “Greenland Twilight”
Everything around us, dead or alive, in the eyes of a crazy photographer mysteriously takes on many variations, so that a seemingly dead object comes to life through light or by its surroundings ... To capture some of this - I suppose that's lyricism.
-Josef Sudek
Fran Forman is no stranger to anyone who works in digital compositing, what some might call digital collage. I started creating digital art in the late '90s, always rooted in my photographic work. Still, I felt I was more proficient at building imagery than directly capturing it, so Fran and I were working in the same spaces, so to speak, though I don't know the reason was the same. Back then, digital work was poorly thought of because "the computer made it." (I wish. I slaved over the masking, composition, and color in my work as much as any other artist would.) I don't know if Fran heard the same kind of comments, but if I were a betting person, I would lay down a year's income on the fact that she did. Graduate programs for work such as this were almost non-existent.
In the late '90s and early 2000s, a few people were well-known and respected for their work in this arena (hint: none of them were me, except perhaps within specific Digital Art SIGs found on Yahoo.) There were the women of the Digital Attelier: Dorothy Simpson Krause, Bonny Lhokta, and Karen Schminke. There was Diane Fenster. Maggie Taylor. And Fran Forman. While I was always impressed by Forman's technical wizardry, I'll be candid here. Her subject matter and use of tintypes and other found imagery were not content that spoke to me in the way I wanted and needed from art. And that's okay because I can still appreciate the incredible artistry involved whether or not someone's ideas speak to me, and that I certainly did. Fran's work shows her supreme mastery of Photoshop montage at a level few achieve.
I'm also a huge fan of artistic evolution. Speaking as an artist, for me, doing the same or similar work for years on end feels like being stuck in place; no growth or change is happening. Somewhere around 2014, Forman's work began to evolve into something with less of a surrealist subject matter and feel than her previous works. By the appearance of her 2016 Midnight Sun series, of which the image here is part, her images began to show the style sensibilities that are now de rigueur in her current work. Rather than being dependent on texture and surrealism, it channels light and darkness, and themes of disaffection and isolation look us squarely in the face. I love this direction of her work; the ideas contained within are areas I can relate to, personally. There is an edgy danger to the recent images, which is also different from the work of the early 2000s. More than that, during this period, she began to feature light as a staring character, similar to the way light works in the work of Richard Tuschman. For me, this sets Forman's work in a class apart from many who work in compositing.
Greenland Twilight
The image I have chosen to show you is not a composite. Forman took this image while visiting Iceland. I wanted to show it because some people believe that those who work in photomontage do so because they cannot make a good image without compositing. I find this false, as in my opinion, montages will only be as good as the images used as the basis for creating them. Further, the thing that makes the image magical is the light itself, so it fits right in with the current trend with her collages.
Asked about this work, Forman told me, “I spent a short while in the north of Iceland, a country resplendent with magnificent views and astonishing landscape vistas. Upon my return home, this one image stood out. The structure is on a former sheep farm and now houses a geothermal pool. Lying 25 miles from the Arctic Circle, the sun was low in the sky as it was late in the day, and the wind was blowing at a steady pace. Distant mountains across a fjord were slightly visible. I felt this image was able to capture my sense of the country.”
For me, this image is romantic in a sad, desolate sort of way. The color is beautiful, and the scenery is far different than most of us encounter in our daily travels. And then there is that glorious, late afternoon light.
Bravo, Fran! You have allowed me to enjoy the magical simplicity of a distant countryside due to your terrific eye for the light.
I hope my readers enjoy this work as much as I do.
Artist Bio
Fran’s photo-montage images have been referred to as photo-paintings, and her background as a painter, therapist and graphic designer, and her life-long interest in art history, is reflected in her provocative images that explore themes of isolation and disconnection amidst the extravagances of American life.
Her work resides in many private collections as well the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (Washington, DC), the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and others.
See more of Fran’s work on her website.
Author Bio
Diana Nicholette Jeon is an award-winning artist based in Honolulu, HI, who works primarily with lens-based media. Her work has been seen both internationally and nationally in solo and group exhibitions. Jeon holds an MFA from UMBC.