Amy Jorgensen

Profile

Amy Jorgensen’s work began as an inquiry into the practices and aesthetics of historical criminal photography and associated assumptions of the photograph as a document of the moment, or a representation of truth – what Walter Benjamin describes as evidence of an occurrence.  Traditional notions of the body in art, the figure as object on view, are set aside to consider the body as an active participant in artistic process.  She incorporates performance and photography with a willingness to use her own body as both test subject and subject matter in an investigation of personal and cultural assumptions linked to our artistic and scientific expectations of photographic practice.  Jorgensen explores the body as both repository and author of information. The resulting photographs are the striking visual residue of her experience: traces of body fluid, clothing, skin prints, and the fine edges of body hair are evidence of her occurrence.  Jorgensen states, “My body is an archive, my skin the surface through which I experience the world.”