Preservation Photographer
About the Artist:
Christine Huhn (b. 1984) is a visual artist and cultural heritage professional who grew up in northeastern Pennsylvania, less than five miles from the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. This connection to the landscape has deeply influenced her work, which focuses on preserving cultural landscapes through film photography and historic photographic processes. She received her bachelor of fine arts in photography from the State University of New York at New Paltz and her master of arts in historic preservation from Savannah College of Art and Design.
Christine's work has been selected for solo and group exhibitions nationally, most notably at the Wildling Museum of Art and Nature, New Museum Los Gatos, and The Center for Fine Art Photography. Over the past ten years, Christine has volunteered at many non-profit organizations including; the National Park Service, the Landmarks Association of St. Louis, Baltimore Heritage, and the Historic Preservation Office (Washington, DC). She has been awarded artist residencies at Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, Mojave National Preserve Artists Foundation, Kala Art Institute, and Santa Fe Art Institute. Christine currently lives in San Francisco, CA.
Desert Symbols
May 2023
Focusing on themes of time, memory, and our human interaction with the land, my work preserves the landscape through film photography and historic photographic processes. During the 2020 shelter in place I was forced out of my studio and darkroom. I began experimenting with the cyanotype process; a cameraless contact printing process utilizing the sun to expose the image onto fabric or paper and water to develop and fix it. Wanting to combine my photographic imagery and textiles, I thought back to my late aunt and the wall tapestries that hung in the stairway landing in her home. When I was very young I would often visit her in Northern NJ. I was captivated by a handmade wall tapestry hanging above the stairway landing in her home. Due to mysterious circumstances my aunt passed away unexpectedly when I was a teenager. Sewing reconnects me to her. Having little knowledge about quilting, I knew the cyanotype process would translate into this medium. I create a large digital negative from a scanned film image then divide the larger image into equal sections. Each individual segment is printed on a piece of 8 inch x 10 inch cyanotype coated white quilting cotton. Using traditional quilting techniques I sew the rectangles together as I would use a square pattern to create a wall hanging quilt.
The imagery of the iconic plants and geologic formations depicted on the quilts were taken in National and State Parks throughout California, Nevada, and Arizona. This work also includes new paper prints created during my most recent artist residency in Santa Fe, NM. Some of the pieces have been toned with botanicals to alter the blue cyanotype color. These monochromatic images reveal the desert landscape's otherworldly features.
My quilts are alluding to the idea of memory. Memorial quilts are quilts made in remembrance of a loved one, often incorporating bits of their clothing with other fabrics. I am capturing a fleeting moment of time in the landscape through the quilts, and the moments are representative of a piece of the landscape. While not directly related to my aunt, the memory of her and our connection is deeply rooted in my quilts as well.
Can We See Time
November 2021
Can we see time? The recession of the rugged coastline, erosion formed textures, and rising sea levels; I am drawn to the inherently ephemeral nature of shorelines. Carleton Watkins was pulled to photograph Seal Rocks in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA). I also feel a deep connection to this landscape. Some moments I have captured of the iconic rocks seem to remain static calling back to his work, but the landscape within GGNRA has also transformed.
For the past seven years, I have been documenting the shoreline within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. My process is slow and methodical, surveying the area and capturing the landscape on black and white medium format film. This time spent in the landscape is important to my artistic process. I’m photographing at sunrise the majority of the time. The light is warm, soft, and diffused. The combination of the film, paper, developer and even the enlarger I use can produce a high contrast gelatin silver print. Therefore, I try to avoid high contrast shooting situations like high noon and full sun.
With millions of visitors in 2019, GGNRA was the most visited site in the National Park System. The human interaction, just like time, shapes the cultural landscape. My images lack or minimize the figure in the landscape. When they do appear, it’s deliberate. Showing how we interact with the landscape is important in this work. Growing up in northeastern Pennsylvania, I was drawn to the rapidly changing landscape surrounding the Delaware River, located within the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. A heavily visited area for New York City and Philadelphia tourists, I could physically see time passing in the fragile landscape. Now living in San Francisco, I find that same relationship to the diverse coastal environment within GGNRA.
