Artist Statement
I am interested in the failures of photography in preserving experience and personal history, as well as the means by which photographs transform history into nostalgic objects that obscure understandings of the past.
In these works, sections of the photographs have been obscured by cross-stitch embroidery sewn directly into the photograph. The embroidery deteriorates the original photograph and forms a pixelated version of the underlying image. Since large areas of the photographs are concealed by the embroidery, small, seemingly trivial details emerge, while the larger picture and context are erased.
In the Berlin series, the images were taken in the city center as well as in the suburbs, where I followed the former path of the Berlin wall. I was particularly interested in photographing locations where no visible traces of the actual wall remain, but there are subtle clues of its previous existence. These clues include incongruities in the architecture that occurred as new structures were built on newly opened land parcels, changes in streetlights, or newer vegetation. In addition to the physical aspects that point to the former division of the city, I was interested in the psychological weight of these sites and the ways in which past history remains very much in the present.
The New Jersey series represents more personal memories. In this series, I was particularly interested in the disjunct between lived experience and photographic representation. The photographs in this series are a combination of family snapshots from my childhood and photographs I took in high school of landscapes around where I grew up in New Jersey. By having the embroidery take the visual structure of digital pixelation, I wanted to make a connection between the human brain trying to retrieve information and digital storage.
Diane Meyer received a BFA in Photography from New York University, Tisch School of the Arts in 1999 and an MFA in Visual Arts from The University of California, San Diego in 2002. She has been living in Los Angeles since 2005 where she is an Associate Professor of Photography at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
She has received grants from The City of Santa Monica Department of Cultural Affairs (2010), The California Council for the Humanities California Stories Fund (2008) and the Durfee Foundation (2005). She has been an artist in residence at Takt, Berlin (2012); 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica (2006-7); CUE Art Foundation, New York (2006); Smack Mellon, Brooklyn (2004); The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Residency in the Woolworth Building (2002-3).
Her work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at the Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh; 18th Street Art Center, Santa Monica; AIR Gallery, NYC and The Society for Contemporary Photography, Kansas City; as well as numerous group shows in the United States and abroad including Schneider Gallery, Chicago; Rayko, San Francisco; China House, Penang, Malaysia; Galerie Huit, Arles, France; Project 42, Alkmaar, The Netherlands; The Center for Photography at Woodstock, NY; The Helsinki Biennale, Finland; CUE Art Foundation, NYC; NEXT Art Fair, Chicago; Field Projects, New York; The Center for Fine Art Photography, Fort Collins; The Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, Grand Rapids; The Seaport Cultural Center, NYC; Cuchifritos Gallery, NYC; Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, NYC; Lennox Contemporary, Toronto; Rotunda Gallery, NYC; Jen Bekman Gallery, NYC; Spaces Gallery, Cleveland; Jessica Murray Projects, NYC; Arthouse, Austin; and the Holter Museum of Art, Helena.
How to use our image viewer
Click on any of the thumbnail images to launch the viewer. You can then navigate forward and backward within the portfolio by clicking the left or right side of the enlarged image. Click the add to collection checkbox to automatically add an image to your collection. Image tags or search engine keywords appear below the collections' checkbox and each word or phrase is a link to potentially more image matches.