Amanda Rataj
Biography
Amanda Rataj is a Toronto-based artist and writer whose practice is concerned with the transitory and ephemeral nature of people & things. Looking to antiquated photographic technology and material processes to articulate these themes, her work explores the boundaries of the photographic print, and has been exhibited as part of CONTACT Photography Festival, at XPACE Cultural Centre, and was auctioned as part of Toronto Timeraiser 2010.
Amanda teaches the albumen printing workshop at Galler 44, and has taught with other community groups such as Lakeshore Arts and the Toronto District School Board. She graduated from OCADU in 2010, and can be found during the day as an animateur at the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery.
CV available upon request.
Artist’s Statement
This collection of images is a cross section of recent work.
In Untitled (Library), I used handmade paper and the historical albumen printing process to mimic and question the photographic object by creating images of libraries that look like authentic, archivable treasures themselves.
In Preserves, ghostly, glowing jars filled with leaves and other natural items float in darkness. Speaking to the rural practice of canning and a loss of the outdoors in contemporary society, these images become curious specimens of preservation and decay, acting as both souvenirs and ambiguous mementos of a natural experience.
My most recent work, Respiration and Measure I is a series of stop-motion films photographed using a still camera, printed as albumen prints, and then reanimated. The universal experience of breathing is used to reflect the impossibility of reconstructing the ephemeral fluidity of movement.
I use albumen printing to convey a sense of materiality and time, referencing and questioning the last breath of material-based photographic practices as image making becomes increasingly digital and bodiless. In Measure I, the physicality of the original albumen image becomes part of the projected film - a medium that by nature can never have materiality while active. The multiple exchanges between contemporary and historical medium & materiality that these images perform belies the implied smoothness of film, and instead conveys the restlessness of the relationship between the two practices.
My current work-in-progress is reflected in the image Untitled (Balance).
