This project started in 2007 after I retired my darkroom and began to experiment with a digital camera and Photoshop. I quickly realized I had found the perfect process for my interest in manipulated imagery. As I became more adept at the technological aspects of the digital camera, film scanner and Photoshop, my resultant black and white images became more complex.
My content is a combination of digital and scanned film – layered pieces of landscape, flowers, windows, doors, mirrors, water and usually females. All of the images I use are from my own shoots. The scenes I create are at once recognizable and not possible -- dreamlike or memory enhanced.
I began to enter the finished prints in juried exhibits and the responses were positive. I also continued to create new work for the portfolio. By mid-2008, I saw the work as a series and titled the pieces to reflect an ongoing narrative of memory, reflection, hope, fear, and choices – observations of moments that are building blocks of my life. I did not originally intend for this work to be autobiographical; that is, however, what it became. In allowing that, I opened a dialogue with viewers who bring their own experiences and memories to the work. The more personal I allowed the work to be, the more universal it became.




Karen Klein