5 x 5 Submission 47 - Christine Heidel

Christine Heidel
Christine Heidel's website
Bio:
Christine Heidel is a fine art photographer based in Seattle, Washington.

Christine graduated with a degree in English Literature from the University of Washington in 1999. Ten years later, she picked up her camera and began a photography project called 365 Days where she took a self-portrait every day for an entire year. While that project started out as fun experiment to document a “day in the life”, it quickly grew into a passion for creating images that were meant to tell a deeper story, elicit emotion and encourage dialogue.

Today, Christine continues to experiment and push her boundaries through the use of Through the Viewfinder techniques and by working to create images that deal with themes such as life/death, loneliness/doubt, fact/fiction and growth/rebirth.

Christine believes that every image should tell a story. She pursues self-portraiture as a means of intimate communication with those who view her art. She wants her art to make viewers think more deeply about their own self and, by extension, the world around them.

Christine was recently selected to participate as a photographer for Living Exposed's Exposure: Hawaii project.

Work Statement:
My series of "through the viewfinder" images entitled "3 cameras" are shot with a Nikon D300 through the viewfinder of an old Kodak Duaflex and include a Polaroid photograph.

Shooting through the viewfinder of the Duaflex allows me to utilize the dirt, grit and distortion of that lens to obscure the subject of the image. The Polaroid image represents yet another layer of deception. The concept behind this series is to expose the layers that we use to hide the reality of ourselves while exploring the concept of identity. Strip away the various lenses and what truth remains?