Lisa Elmaleh: Everglades

September 25 - December 18, 2010

Photography dealer Kathy McCarver Root and her gallery, KMR Arts, proudly announce the opening of a one person show of silver gelatin photographs entitled "Lisa Elmaleh: Everglades." The opening is September 25 with an artist's reception from 3 to 6 pm and continues through December 18, 2010.

Lisa Elmaleh is a photographer who has embraced a nineteenth century process of making photographs, the wet collodion process. This process is extremely labor intensive and is rarely used by emerging photographers in the age of digital technology. Lisa Elmaleh has traveled the back roads of America with her 8x10 camera and her portable darkroom, seeking to lose herself in the vastness of the natural surroundings. 

Ms. Elmaleh eloquently describes her "Everglades" series: 

"As a native of South Florida, the Everglades is an ecosystem that has shaped my own history. Inspired by the early photographers of the American west, I have documented the flora and fauna of the Everglades and the surrounding natural areas using my large format 8"x10" camera and the wet collodion process, a nineteenth century process requiring the image be exposed and developed on site. The collodion process renders light slowly and reveals the passing of time, a quality which is essential to my work.

To date, more than half of the Everglades has been repurposed for urban and agricultural use. The brochure given to all visitors of Everglades National Park reads, 'With the help of pumps, floodgates, and retention ponds along the park's boundary, the Everglades is presently on life support, alive but diminished.' I hope to preserve an essence of the Everglades."

Lisa Elmaleh, is based in Brooklyn, New York, and graduated with high honors from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Ms. Elmaleh is the recipient of numerous scholarships, grants, and residencies including: the Tierney Family Foundation's Tierney Fellowship, the Nikon Vision Scholarship, the Silas H. Rhodes Scholarship (School of Visual Arts), and the Everglades National Park Artist in Residency (Everglades National Park, Florida).