October 11 – December 1, 2024
Reception: October 18, 6-8pm
Online event: November 14, 6:30-8:30pm
“All the images we create share a strange mixture of magic, truth, and illusion” – Edward Bateman
The proliferation of Artificial Intelligence in media and art has been embraced by some, feared by others, and has prompted heated discussions in the world of photography. Is a photograph a “real” photograph if it’s made with AI? How much AI is too much? Photography is dead! Photography is having a renaissance! No matter where you fall, the conversation has been loud and hard to avoid. One school of thought likens the current controversy of AI in photography to the historical controversy of photography itself. In the early 19th century photography was a fledgling technology widely rejected by artists of the day, many who feared that photography was a threat and would be the death of painting. At that time, the new technology was seen as purely scientific, all about processes and equipment, and not as a tool to develop a new way of seeing, creating, and expressing an artist’s internal vision. 200 years later, in this early period of the 21st century, the same debates continue in the fine art realm, with consensus merely a daydream.
One photographer who has used the latest tools at hand to create works of nuance and narrative, with mystery and memory, is Fran Forman. In the early 1990’s Forman began using Photoshop to push her interest in combining photography and mixed-media. She employed old and new photographs, scanned objects, paintings, and drawings, to create visual narratives untethered to time and place. The more recent incorporation of AI into Forman’s photographic work was a natural progression and has only furthered her ability to express her ethereal and cinematic vision. Using AI as an instrument in her work allows a seamless blending of both Forman’s visual concepts and original images. With the work in Obscure Intentions, Fran Forman takes the best of 21st century technology and effortlessly blends it with her career in photography and design to create what can only be called otherworldly views into history, melancholy, and illusion. – Jessica Burko, Curator, Obscure Intentions
“My photo-paintings are constructed scenes that integrate and juxtapose realism with illusion, villains with saints, longing with disconnection, whimsy with reverence. Born of intuition, mood, and inspiration, they are suspended in vibrant fantasies that hint at ambiguities. Adding to my considerable toolbox for creating visual narratives is the revolutionary text-to-image generator. The resulting fantastical images, aligned with my long-term interest in magic realism, are hybrid – not strictly photographic, but suggesting a reality that still is illusive. These images are collaborations – endlessly altered and manipulated – between me, my photographs, my imagination, my hand, and the machines and robots. They are post-photography, intelligent images. I relish the serendipity, and I find that sometimes what lies hidden is a treasure worth revealing.”
Between professional life and raising two daughters, Fran Forman continued to create her personal art, combining her illustrative and photographic skills with her fascination with the human psyche. Forman’s photo-paintings are in the permanent collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (Washington, DC), the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Grace Museum, Abilene, The Sunnhordland Museum, Norway, the Conner Collection at The University of Texas, and North Down Museum, Northern Ireland and in 2022, she was awarded Top 50 from the prestigious Photo Lucida’s Critical Mass. Forman has mounted many solo exhibitions, including The Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock Abbey, England; BBA Gallery (Berlin); Gauting International Photography (Munich); Massachusetts State House and The Griffin Museum of Photography; AfterImage Gallery (Dallas); University of North Dakota; Galeria Photo/Graphica (Mexico); Sohn Fine Art; OpenShutter (Dorango); and Pucker Gallery (Boston), as well as numerous group shows. She is also the recipient of multiple residencies and awards and her work has been featured in The British Journal of Photography, 1854 Media, Dek Unu, L’Oeil de la Photographie, fStop Magazine, All about Photo, Shadow and Light, and other photo journals. Forman’s second monograph, The Rest Between Two Notes, was published in 2020 and has won an International Photo Award and selected as a best photo-book for 2020 by Elizabeth Avedon and What Will You Remember. Her first book, Escape Artist, 2013, received similar acclaim and awards. She was a Resident Scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University for 16 years. She teaches advanced workshops nationally and abroad. Fran Forman is represented by Pucker Gallery (Boston), Afterimage Gallery (Dallas), Susan Spiritus Gallery (Newport Beach, CA), BBA Gallery (Berlin), Photo/Graphica (Mexico).