Lisa Redburn
Experiencing Wonder

Artist Statement

I photograph things that move me and make me wonder. My work is about the passage of time: what was, what is, and what might be.

Creating these pictures uses my body as well as my camera. I contort myself on Paris curbs to find the city upside down in a puddle. I crawl like a crab through rooms half filled with sand in a deserted mining town in Namibia. I gather petals, leaves, and seedpods from my garden, scatter them over a basin of water or ice, and climb a ladder to look down with my camera as they drift together and apart.

In recent years I've begun to interact physically with my printed photographs, reshaping the experiences that they originally captured. I fold and balance them, then move in close, until the paper becomes architecture and light finds its way through. I merge fragments from different photos into 3D forms that connect times and places, and place them in nature or suspend them as mobiles so the relationships keep changing. And I transform prints of places that have moved me, by pleating them or exposing them to sand, water, or fire. Then I photograph them or layer them over a print of a related landscape.

Each of these is a way of making time visible. The work is fragile, and so is the moment I have to catch it before it changes or disappears. But in these quiet, in-between places I find wonder, and a reminder that light is there if you look for it.

Artist Bio

Lisa Redburn is an artist whose work begins with photography and explores the intersections between what is real, reflected, and remembered. She finds beauty, wonder, and layered stories in the puddles of Paris, floating flora, and forgotten rooms. Recently she has been physically interacting with her photographs to reshape the experiences she originally captured — folding, floating, burning, and burying her own prints.

Based in Plymouth, MA, Lisa’s work has appeared in numerous national exhibits, including the Attleboro Arts Museum, the Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts, and the Griffin Museum of Photography. She has received national recognition, including Best in Show in “From a Seed… A World of Botanicals” at the New York Center for Photographic Arts (NYC4PA). Her images have appeared in Photo Review, LensWork’s “Seeing in Sixes,” YourDailyPhotograph.com and donttakepictures.com. 

Lisa studied photography with Alison Shaw on Martha’s Vineyard and with Emily Belz at the Griffin Museum of Photography.