Artist Statement

Landscapes and Prayers

Why do I make landscapes?  The answer is twofold.  In part, I make them because the outside world always seemed safer than the inside world of my childhood.  Being outside offered me an escape from family difficulties.   In the local woods, I found peace – something I rarely found at home.

My maternal grandmother, who collected Asian art and who was a skilled practitioner of Japanese Ikebana flower arranging, also influenced me.  As a child, I was completely captivated by the art in her home and by her flower arrangements.  If there is an Asian feeling to this work, it is because of her.

These images were shot with a plastic panoramic film camera and printed on gelatin silver paper.  After the printing process, I bleach, tone and sometimes hand-color the images to create my own unique world.

Artist Bio

Marky Kauffmann has been working as a fine art photographer, educator and curator for more than thirty years. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2017 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist’s Fellowship in Photography. Recently, she won First Place in Soho Photo Gallery’s National Alternative Processes Competition and was a finalist in the 7th Edition Julia Margaret Cameron Worldwide Gala Awards in three categories, including portraiture, landscape, and fine art photography.

Kauffmann has been a freelance curator for many years. Her first curatorial endeavor, Beyond Mothers and Children: New Feminist Photographers, featured the images of six women photographers working on issues surrounding the lives of women and girls.  In 2015, she helped curate Veiled Rebellion, an exhibit featuring the work of Pulitzer Prize winning photographer, Lynsey Addario, at Milton Academy’s Nesto Gallery.  Kauffmann’s exhibit, Outspoken: Seven Women Photographers has traveled extensively throughout New England.

Kauffmann is a passionate educator who has taught photography at numerous secondary schools, including Buckingham Browne and Nichols School and Milton Academy.  She also spent twenty years teaching photography to adults as part of the New England School of Photography’s Evening Workshop Program.

Kauffmann believes discovering photography allowed her to finally find her voice.  She utilizes traditional darkroom techniques, alternative processes, and digital technologies to create her unique images.