Edited by Matilde Casaglia, Art Editor – matilde.casaglia@positive-magazine.com
Photos by Jessie Thatcher thatcherjessie.tumblr.com
Jessie Thatcher is a photographer with a passion for abstraction and complexity. Her artworks are the result of a compounded deconstruction which aims at a re-photography that creates movements and possibilities. The artist studied in California (Sierra College, UC Berkeley and Mills College), where she still lives.
Viewing the images of the Close Series invites and fascinates depicting and guessing what it is. The artist explains: “As a viewer, I want to struggle at what I am seeing. ” Her work is not focused on minimalism, she struggles to recreate a mixture of photography and abstract art in order to stress a minimal-perfectionist quality.
All of the images differ slightly in tone, as a result of the elaborate process which is intended to achieve complexity. Jessie Thatcher uses a particular technique to produce her artworks: scan, print, grid, dissect, arrange, scan, dissect, photograph, print. “In this process, I don’t color correct and I allow the camera to pick up whatever discoloration occurs at the time; there is a great level of chance at play.” The artist leaves the control to the discoloration, until when she has to arrange the imagery. At this point she has to put her hands on it. But she is not looking for corrections. “My photographic work is kind of a revolt against the traditional approaches to photography. This series is similar in response to the post-modernists in the 80’s about what is original? In this series, I wanted to achieve a complexity at viewing an image and reproducing an image and allowing whatever imperfections take place during this process.”
The artist wants to make the viewers integrate and blend the role of memory in their daily intake imagery. She is asking us to look at an image in more complex terms.
