Name: Jolene Monheim
Hometown: Great Falls Montana
Education: BS in Physical Therapy
--Current projects and publications:
I am currently “submersed” in an ongoing and evolving project of photographing people, mostly dancers, underwater. I am interested in all photographic subject matter, but I seem to have the most gratifying artistic experiences with underwater imagery. I am also studying oil, pastel, and acrylic painting, and have a regular painting schedule. I have an upcoming exhibit at an outdoor venue in May, and am experimenting with printing my underwater images on Lexon, with a large format printer so that I can put them in windows and use backlighting.
--Past projects and publications:
I had two exhibits last year, a solo photography exhibit at a museum, and at a gallery which featured my paintings, along with three other women artists work.
1) What inspired you to begin photographing?
I remember spending hours and hours of my childhood absorbed by the photographs in Life magazine. I would pour over faces in yearbooks wherever I could find them. My father gave me my first camera - an Argus, when I enrolled in a photography class during college in 1977. My images up until 2005 were for the most part documentary, my children, my family, places I’d been, etc.
How has that inspiration changed over time?
I sold my PT Clinic in 2003 and began to slowly devote my time to the visual arts. I started painting, and realized that I needed good reference material, so I started to play around with Photoshop. In 2005 I began the underwater photography project with a friend. She was a dancer who had previously posed for me for paintings during and after her pregnancy. On a whim we decided that it would be fun to go underwater with her tutu on, and see what happened. I knew someone who managed a health club and we were allowed to use the pool after hours. I immediately became hooked on the underwater environment because of the freedom of movement that the dancer experienced, the collaborative and improvisational elements, along with the interesting light. Since water essentially acted like a big filter, it was pretty tricky getting enough photons to register on my sensor, plus my camera was an inexpensive point and shoot. I gradually upgraded and currently shoot with a Canon D20 and an Ikelite underwater housing. In the spring of 2007, I stumbled upon a fantastic podcast, Photowalkthrough.com and really started to amp up my Photoshop skills. I started posting my underwater photos to Flickr that spring, and was astonished by the quality of photographic art that I found there. I can spend hours and hours surfing Flickr – it’s visual food. Flickr artists are a constant inspiration to me, and I’ve cultivated several meaningful and dear friendships there.
2) What do you pay attention to now as opposed to the past? What has changed in your vision?
I’m acutely aware that I will only see a dwindling finite number of moonrises, so I don’t take them for granted anymore. I’ve become very aware of the play of light upon form, as well as the abstract designs created by the value structure within an image. I’m endlessly curious about what makes something visually attractive. I love the process of creating atmospheric and evocative images. It’s very organic and non linear process. Each image almost gives birth to itself, and I “assist” and try not to get in the way.
3) Who has inspired you?
John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Burton Silverman, Maxfield Parish, Ansel Adams, Henri Bresson, Annie Leibowitz. Underwater photographers who inspire me are Shelly Corbet and Howard Shatz, as well as the many fabulous Flickr artists producing beautiful works daily.
4) What would you say your underlying theme is in all of your work?
Color, light, relationships, and collaboration are all big players. I try, in my limited and feeble way, to document that mysterious aliveness that is all around me. Of course, I will always fall short, but on occasion an image will plug into a bigger archetypical theme. That’s happened on occasion, i.e. with the Ophelia and the Psyche and Eros images. It’s always surprising, gratifying and shocking when it happens. I think all of us are trying to find meaning in our lives and I’m grateful for the expressive tools I have to help me sort it out.
5) How does your work relate to your life?
How I live my life is the most important art I create. I try to find beauty, fun, balance, transcendence and flow everyday. I use my art to challenge myself and help me work through the big issues of being a human on Earth today, and to stay in the present moment…. To get in the Zone.
6) Where do you see your work going in the future?
I will continue to refine my techniques, both in camera and in Photoshop. I plan on getting an underwater housing for my Canon D40, so that I can better capture images that are in difficult lighting situations. And at some lovely point I would like to make some money!
7) What is your goal in photography?
To express beauty.
8) When someone looks at your photography 100 years from now, what do you think they will see?
Will we have water in 100 years?
9) Tell us about your experience with the Waterlogged August collaboration. What was enjoyable about it? What was difficult? What would you do differently if you had it all to do over again? What was your favorite photo/piece of writing?
I love collaboration, but I was a little apprehensive - it was like going on a blind date. I didn’t know how Marshall and I would communicate, via email, skype, or…. just through our art. I was happily surprised by his response to the work I posted to the blog, and then astonished, touched, made to think, and generally delighted by his poems as they flowed out of him. Over the course of a month, I have grown to love him as an artist (because his art comes from a sacred place), for his gift of conjury, his trust to *not* catch himself – and especially for knowing that falling is fine.
I am partial to “After the last Beat of a Heart Monitor” which goes with “Ophelia’s Mother,” and “Bodies Talking” which goes with “Succurro.” “All from the Small of your Back” with Psyche and Eros, kicks ass, as Marshall would say,…. but I love them all, and I’m deeply honored to be part of this project. Thank you for inviting me - it’s been fun!
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