Artist Statement
I photograph, first and foremost, to document. While I keep a written journal for the conscious mind, photography is how I record my inner-works, a sketch of the unconscious. Like wandering through a dreamscape, meaning is not plainly present. My obsessions overflow into my physical surroundings as if I have run out of space in mind to tend to them. Visual themes begin to surface and a narrative becomes increasingly clear. Through the resulting images, I piece my thoughts together from outside myself in order to reach a fuller perspective. The question is posed, but my findings expose inquiries more complex than the first.
Anna Leigh Clem is a photo-based artist working with book arts, text, video, sculpture, and other media to explore and portray her longings for innocence and connection with the natural world. Compelled by the secrets inherent in memories, dreams, and childhood, her work aims to recreate these otherwise invisible realms. Clem received the Robert Elder Scholarship in 2008 and was selected as an Honorable Mention in the 2015 FotoVisura Grant. Her work has been shown at the Center for Photography at Woodstock, Foley Gallery in New York, Visual Studies Workshop, Camera Club of New York, Davis Orton Gallery in Hudson, New York, Griffin Museum of Photography, Month of Photography Los Angeles, GuatePhoto Festival, and Elysium Gallery in Swansea, Wales. Clem has been interviewed by World Photography Organisation and JPG Magazine. She has published both trade edition books and artist’s books, several of which are held in the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University and the Franklin Furnace Artists’ Book Collection at Pratt Institute.
As a child, Clem’s imagination was inspired by the small magical garden behind her home within the urban enclave of Hoboken, New Jersey. Some years later, she attended high school in New Paltz, New York where she discovered photography and the greater natural world. In 2012, Clem graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Fine-Arts Degree in photography, and in 2021 received her Master of Fine-Arts Degree in photography and integrated media from Lesley University. Clem is currently based in Somerville, Massachusetts.
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