Online 2020 emerging photographer of the year: Colleen Rauscher

My work focuses on structure and pattern and incorporates the element of chance. I work to capture a unique and unfamiliar perspective on the world around me. Through experimentation and instinct, I coax objects and patterns to emerge from the intersection and overlap of lines and light. I seek to shift perceptions about objects, images or materials in an unexpected way in order to challenge the viewer.   

I collage images, memories and fragments inside the camera, directly onto the physical film. I consistently shoot two exposures on the same frame of film, in the same location, often from different angles and orientations. The resulting double exposures represent fleeting memories that overlap and tangle, elusive images of the past and dreamlike recollections. Perceptions of place and time are altered, fluid, and inconsistent, just like our own memories of past events and places, and how we think we remember things. I leave the viewer with a suggestion of isolation, of atmospheric and ambiguous surroundings denying the initial impulse to ‘read’ the image.

BIOGRAPHY

Colleen Rauscher is a Calgary-based collage/mixed media artist and photographer who recently re-discovered film photography and the allure of the darkroom after a 30-year hiatus, when she first discovered photography at ACAD (now Alberta University of the Arts), before digital existed. 

After taking an introductory darkroom class at SAIT in early 2018, her original passion for analogue photography was re-ignited, and she started experimenting with a low-tech Holga camera.

 Rauscher holds a BFA from Concordia University in Montreal, and has participated in local, national and international exhibitions with her mixed media artworks. Currently, she maintains a studio practice and is in the process of setting up her own darkroom.