The Ohio Project: emulation project, Nancy Rexroth

Nancy Rexroth is best known for her series entitled “Iowa in Ohio,” in 1976. Rexroth shot this series using a Diana camera, which was a plastic camera made in the 1960’s. Rexroth attempts to convey rural “mid-western life” in both Iowa, the place she grew up, and in Ohio, the place where she now lives. Additionally, each photograph measures approximately 4” x 4.”
The combination of the vintage, low-tech style of the photographs, and their actual size, gives this series an intimate and imaginary feel. Rexroth’s choice to use a Diana camera was precisely for this point. Rexroth shot this series in this particular style in order to capture the imaginary dimension of remembering one’s childhood memories.
Although I did not use a Diana camera to shoot these photographs, instead I used a piece of women’s pantyhose to cover the enlarger lens. This helped to give my images a blurred, and hopefully imaginary look.
Photographs have always acted as a means for remembering old memories. My goal was to create images that not only emulated the work of Nancy Rexroth, but also took on a feeling of nostalgia. I wanted my images to look as though they could be found in an old box in someone’s attic that had been stored there for years.

mapping project 2009

Since arriving at Oberlin, I’ve noticed that I’ve spent much of these past three years attempting to define my home, and what it means to be home. I think often times, when people leave home, the place they grew up in, and go off to school, the distinction between your home at school, and your home where your family lives becomes blurred. Many of my friends from school felt that once they had completed their first year of school, the place where they had grown up no longer felt like home, or a place they particularly wanted to return to. For my first and second year of school the opposite had always been true for me, and I’d found that where I was born and raised continued to be a place of comfort and necessity. Although now I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Oberlin is my new home, it has begun to form into a place of reliability, if not only because of longevity. I think that home is transient and that’s what I have attempted to convey in my mapping project. One’s home can take on any form, shape or size.

first attempt: BB, WW, BW