ARTISTS STATEMENT:
We collaborate on photographic projects. Our interest is in photography's storytelling potential to engage the edge between the heroic and the commonplace. We are drawn to the confluence of history, myth and popular culture as they shape our understanding of who we are.
| BARBARA CIUREJ is a Chicago-based photographer and graphic designer. She has a BS in Visual Communications from the Institute of Design+Illinois Institute of Technology. Ever looking to the art historical past to invoke order and harmony, her search for narratives to explain how we got here has fueled 30+ years of making pictures. | 
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LINDSAY LOCHMAN is a Milwaukee-based photographer and lecturer at the University of Wisconsin /Milwaukee. She received her MS in Visual Communications at the Institute of Design+Illinois Institute of Technology. In her quest to organize the natural world, she is inspired by the intersection of science, history and the unconscious. |
OUR COLLABORATIVE PROCESS:
Our collaborative practice began from our work at the Institute of Design and developed in the alternative art world of the 1980s. We were asking the same questions about finding our place in the world
and using photography to examine those questions. On
a practical level, working with a collaborator provides critique, a willing
model, a road trip companion, an assistant, an editor. On a conceptual level, it challenges the notion of the
primacy of the individual artist’s vision, the artist/model relationship,
and ownership of the final work. Collaboration opens the possibility of moving beyond personal stories and into the realm of collective experience. It has been the core of our practice and mirrors the fluid and mutable ways of storytelling traditions.
Depending on the project, we shoot together or separately
and when necessary, model. Each body of
work evolves through research and debate, editing and compromise. To bridge the
distance between two cities, we rely on virtual communication, our online notebooks as well as studio practice.
Over the years, we have been fortunate to be part of communities where the exchange of ideas rooted in collective action fostered our own process: Artemisia Gallery, The Dinner Party Project in Chicago and Ragdale Foundation.
projects
pliant history
natural history
processed views
ponder food as love
watch me grow
archive
©2018 Barbara Ciurej & Lindsay Lochman